Clat 



Sot 



189 T 4 




Glass. 
Book. 



TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 



J ~ 



DE. HOLLAND'S WOEKS. 

BRIGHTWOOD EDITION. 

Each in one volume 16mo, Cabinet Size* 

BITTER-SWEET: a Poem, ....... $1 50 

KATHRINA-: a Poem 1 50 

LETTERS TO YOUNG PEOPLE, 150 

GOLD-FOIL, hammered from Popular Proverbs, 1 75 

LESSONS IN LIFE, . . 1 75 

PLAIN TALKS, on Familiar Subjects, ... 1 75 



BRIO 11 T WOOD EDITION.- 

T I T C M B ' S 

LETTERS TO YOUXG PEOPLE, 

SINGLE AND MARRIED. 



TIMOTHY TITCOMB, Esqttibi 



NEW YORK: 
SOEIBNER, ARMSTRONG & CO., 

SUCCESSORS TO 

CHARLES SCRIBXER & CO., 

654 BROADWAY. 

1872. 



S 



-B3 ^ 



#• 



\« 



«^i 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1858, 

By CHAKLES SCRIBNER, 

In the Clerk's office of the District Court of the United States fc 

the Southern District of Slew Yorfc. 




TO TEE 



REV. HENRY WARD BEECHER. 



You have kindly permitted me to dedicate this 
book to you. I do it with hearty pleasure, and 
with cordial thanks for your courtesy, because 
it will do me good in several ways. First, it will 
give mt opportunity to manifest the respect and 
admiration which I entertain towards one who, in 
the best way, is doing more than any other Ameri- 
can for the elevation of the standard of Christian 
manhood and womanhood. Second, it will save to 
me the awkward labor of writing a general preface. 
One can say to a friend, you know, in a familiar 
way, what he would hesitate to say directly to 
the public of his own performances. Third, it 
will show the public that you know the author oi 



vi PREFACE. 

these letters, and that you have confidence in his 
good intentions. 

The Great Master taught you how to teach, 
and if we heed the lesson of His life, He will teach 
us all. He assumed a sympathetic level with hu- 
manity, that He might secure the eye and ear of 
the world. Through these He obtained the heart 
— a conquest X3reliminary to that of the world's un- 
derstanding and life. It was the divine policy — 
rather, perhaps, I should say, the eternal necessity 
— that He should be made in all points like as we 
are, in order to a fitness for and the fulfilment of 
His mission. It was the brother that was in Him 
which touched humanity, and became the medium 
of heavenly impulses and inspirations; and it is 
the brother in us, rather than the preceptor, which 
will enable us to reach the hearts and minds that call 
for our ministrations. 

With this idea in mind, I cannot but think that 
a general mistake has been made in the instructions 
given to the young. Most writers have chosen a 
standpoint distant from, and elevated above, the 
i warm, quick natures which they have addressed. 
The young have been preached to, lectured to, 
taught, exhorted, advised, but they have rarely 
been talked to. My aim, in this triple-headed series 



PREFACE. vii 

of letters, is to give brotherly counsel, in a direct 
and pointed way, to the young men and women 
of the country, upon subjects which have imme- 
diate practical bearing upon their life and destiny, 
and to give this counsel without a resort to cant, or 
to the preceptive formularies that so much prevail 
in didactic literature. I think I know the young, 
and know what they need; so I have addressed 
them with this presumption, and with the same 
freedom — sometimes with the same earnest and 
emphatic abruptness — that I would u^e in talking 
to brothers and sisters whose eyes were looking in- 
to mine, whose hands I held. 

After all, is there not an assumption of superior- 
ity in this? Only that which is necessary for de- 
canting the expeiiences and the truths which my 
heart holds into the hearts I seek to fill. A 
pitcher may have an ear noticeable for length and 
breadth, and its contents may occupy an inferior 
level, yet it may biim a goblet with pure water, 
without other elevation than that which is necessary 
for the service. 

You will notice that I address my letters to tho 
young men, young women, and young married 
people, as classes, with distinctness of aim and ap- 
plication, while I enclose all in a single volume. 



viii PEE FACE. 

I have intended the whole book for each class. I 
believe that each should know what I have to say 
to the other. I have written nothing to one class 
which it would not be well for the other to know. 
The effort to maintain a divided interest and a 
divided sympathy between the sexes, to deny to 
them partnership in a common knowledge of their 
relationship, to hide them from each other as if 
they were necessarily enemies or dangerous asso- 
ciates, and to obliterate the idea that they arc 
sharers in the same nature, and companions in a 
common destiny, may spring from the purest mo- 
tives, but it produces inhuman results. 

I look around me, and I see the young of both 
sexes, with hearts bounding high with hope, forms 
elastic with health, and eyes bright with the enjoy- 
ment of life; and the thought of the stern discip- 
line that awaits them, touches me to tears. Their 
dawning sun gilds only the mountain-tops of lif e, 
and leaves the blind denies and dismal gorges for 
their weary feet to find, through years of patient 
or fretful travel. To tell them how to perform this 
journey worthily, and to do it hand in hand, in 
harmonious companionship, I have written these 
letters. It has been with me an honest and earn- 
est work, in the object of which I am sure ycu 



PREFACE. ix 

will sympathize. I only hope that you will find 
little to criticise and nothing to condemn, in the 
nature and style of the means by which I have 
sought to accomplish it. 

Yours, 

"With respectful affection, 

The Author. 

Springfield, July 1, 1858. 



CONTENTS. 



LETTERS TO YOUNG MEN. 

LETTER. PAGE. 

I. — Getting the Right Start, 13 

II.— Female Society— The Woman fob a Wife, . . 22 

III. — Manners and Dress 31 

TV.— Bad Habits, 37 

V. — The Blessings of Poverty — Office and Effect of 

a Profession, 44 

VI. — Food and Physical Culture, 52 

VII.— Social Duties and Privileges, 60 

YTIL— The Reasonableness and Desirableness of Relig- 
ion, ..... 78 



LETTERS TO YOUNG WOMEN. 

I. — Dress — Its Proprieties and Abuses, . . . .81 

EC.— The Transition from Girlhood to Womanhood, . 89 

HI. — Acquisitions and Accomplishments, . . . .97 

IV. — Unreasonable and Injurious Restraints, . . 107 



xii 



CONTENTS. 



LETTER. PAGE. 

V.— The Claims op Love and Lucre, . # . .116 

VI.— The Prudent and Proper Use op Language, . . 125 

VII. — Housewifery and Industry, . . . . . 135 

VIIL— The Beauty and Blessedness op Female Piety, . 145 



LETTERS TO YOUNG MARRIED PEOPLE. 



L— The Fhist Essential Duties op the Connubial 

Relation, 157 

II. — Special Duties op the Husband, • • • • 167 

m. — Special Duties of the Wife, • • , 177 

IV.— The Rearing of Children, . . . • .180 

V.— Separation— Family Relatives— Servants, • . I»5 

VI.— The Institution op Home, • 205 

VII.— Social Homes, and Blessings for Daily Use, • • 215 

VUL— -A Vision op Life, and its Meaning, . . • . 224 



LETTERS TO YOUNG MEN. 



LETTER L 

Getting the right Start. 

In idle wishes fools supinely stay, 

Be there a will, then wisdom finds a way. 

Buens. 

I SUPPOSE that the first great lesson a young 
man should leam is that he knows nothing; and 
that the earlier and more thoroughly this lesson is 
learned, the better it will be for his peace of mind 
and his success in life. A young man, bred at home, 
and growing up in the light of parental admiration 
and fraternal pride, cannot readily understand how 
it is that every one else can be his equal in talent 
and acquisition. If, bred in the country, he seeks 
the life of the town, he will very early obtain an 
idea of his insignificance. After putting on airs 
and getting severely laughed at, going into a bright 
and facile society and finding himself awkward and 
tongue-tied, undertaking to speak in some public 
place and breaking down, and paying his addresses 
60 some gentle charmer and receiving for his amio 



14 UTCOMB'S LETTERS. 

ble condescension a mitten of inconvenient dimen- 
sions, lie will be apt to sit down in a state " bor- 
dering on distraction," to reason about it. 

This is a critical period in his history. The re- 
sult of his reasoning will decide his fate. If, at 
this time, he thoroughly comprehend, and in his 
soul admit and accept the fact, that he knows noth- 
ing and is nothing ; if he bow to the conviction 
that his mind and his person are but ciphers among 
the significant and cleanly cut figures about him, 
and that whatever he is to be, and is to win, must 
be achieved by hard work, there is abundant hope 
of him. If, on the contrary, a huge self-conceit 
still hold possession of him, and he straighten 
stiffly up to the assertion of his old and valueless 
self ; or if he sink discouraged upon the threshold 
of a life of fierce competitions and more manly emu- 
lations, he might as well be a dead man. The world 
has no use for such a man, and he is only to retire 
or be trodden upon. 

When a young man has thoroughly compre- 
hended the fact that he knows nothing, and that, 
intrinsically, he is of but little value, the next thing 
for him to learn is that the world cares nothing for 
him ; — that he is the subject of no man's over- 
whelming admiration and esteem; that he must take 
care of himself. A letter of introduction may pos- 
sibly procure him an invitation to tea. If he wear 
a good hat, and tie his cravat with propriety, the 
sexton will show him a pleasant seat in church, 
and expect him to contribute " liberally when the 



GETTING TJIE RIGHT START. 15 

plate goes round. If he be a stranger, lie will find 
every man busy with, his own affairs, and none to 
look after him. He will not be noticed until he 
becomes noticeable, and he will not become notice- 
able until he does something to prove that he has an 
absolute value in society. No letter of recommen- 
dation will give him this, or ought to give him this. 
No family connection will give him this, except 
among those few who thin k more of blood than 
brains. 

Society demands that a young man shall be some- 
body, not only, but that he shah prove his right to 
the title ; and it has a right to demand this. Socie- 
ty will not take this matter upon trust — at least, not 
for a long time, for it has been cheated too fre- 
quently. Society is not very particular what a man 
does, so that it prove him to be a man : then it will 
bow to him and make room for him. I know a 
young man who made a place for himself by writing 
an article for the North American Review : nobody 
read the article, so far as I know, but the fact that 
he wrote such an article, that it was very long, and 
that it was published, did the business for him. 
Everybody, however, cannot write articles for the 
North American Review — at least, I hope every 
body will not, for it is a publication which makes 
me a quarterly visit ; but everybody who is some- 
body can do something. There is a wide range of 
effort between holding a skein of silk for a lady and 
saving her from drowning — between collecting 
voters on election day and teaching a Sunday 



16 TITC0MK3 LETTERS. 

School class. A man must enter society of his own 
free will, as an active element or a valuable compo- 
nent, before he can receive the recognition that 
every true man longs for. I take it that this is 
right. A man who is willing to enter society as 
a beneficiary is mean, and does not deserve recog- 
nition. 

There is no surer sign of an unmanly and cow- 
ardly spirit than a vague desire for help ; a wish to 
depend, to lean upon somebody, and enjoy the 
fruits of the industry of others/ There are multi- 
tudes of young men, I suppose, who indulge in 
dreams of help from some quarter, coming in at a 
convenient moment, to enable them to secure the 
success in life which they covet. The vision 
haunts them of some benevolent old gentleman 
with a pocket full of money, a trunk full of mort- 
gages and stocks, and a mind remarkably apprecia- 
tive of merit and genius, who will, perhaps, give or 
lend them anywhere from ten to twenty thousand 
dollars, with which they will commence and go 
on swhnniingly. Perhaps he will take a different 
turn, and educate them. Or, perhaps, with an eye 
to the sacred profession, they desire to become the 
beneficiaries of some benevolent society, or some 
gentle circle of female devotees. 

To me, one of the most disgusting sights in the 
world is that of a young man with healthy blood, 
broad shoulders, presentable calves, and a hundred 
and fifty pounds more or less, of good bone and 
muscle, standing with his hands in his pockets, 



TTTCOMB S LETTERS 17 

longing for help. I admit that there are positions 
in ^hich the most independent spirit may accept of 
assistance — may, in fact, as a choice of evil- 

but for a man who is able to help himself, to 
in the acconr 
his plans of life, is positive proof that he has re- 
\ most unfortunate training, or that there is 
a leaven of meanness in his conip: I should 

ke him shudder. Do not misunderstand me : I 
;ld not inculcate that pride of personal indepen- 
rice which repels in i: veness the well- 

meant good offices and benefactions of friends, or 
that resorts to desperate shifts rather than incur an 
obL : : Dudemn in a young man is the 

love of dependence; the will; idcr 

obligation for that which his own efforts may 
whx 

I have often thought that the E In : ati : n Soci 
and kindred organizations, do much more harm til 
: .1 by inviting into the Christian ministry a el 
7 3ung men who are willing to be helped. A man 
who willingly receives assistance, especially if he fa 
applied for it, invariably sells himself to his bane- 
.: benefactor happen to be a m 
-riving absolutely necec 1st- 

ance to one whom he knows to be sensitive and 
honorable. Any young man who will part with 
freedom and the self-respect that grows out of ae 
reliance and self-support, is unmanly, neither de- 
serving of assistance, nor capable of making good 
use of it. Assistance will in variably be received by 



18 GETTING THE BIGHT START. 

a young man of spirit as a dire necessity — as the 
chief evil of his poverty. 

When, therefore, a young man has ascertained 
and fully received the fact that he does not know 
anything, that the world does not care anything 
about him, that what he wins must be won by his 
own brain and brawn, and that while he holds in 
his own hands the means of gaining his own liveli- 
hood and the objects of his life, he cannot receive 
assistance without compromising his self-respect 
and selling his freedom, he is in a fair position for 
beginning life. When a young man becomes 
aware that only by his own efforts can he rise into 
companionship and competition with the sharp, 
strong, and well-drilled minds around liim, he is 
ready for work, and not before. 

The next lesson is that of patience, thoroughness 
of preparation, and contentment with the regular 
channels of business effort and enterprise. This is, 
perhaps, one of the most difficult to learn, of all 
the lessons of life. It is natural for the mind to 
reach out eagerly for immediate results. As man- 
hood dawns, and the young man catches in its first 
light the pinnacles of realized dreams, the golden 
domes of high possibilities, and the purpling hills 
of great delights, and then looks down upon the 
narrow, sinuous, long and dusty path by which 
others have reached them, he is apt to be disgusted 
with the passage, and to seek for success through 
broader channels, by quicker means. Beginning 
at the very foot of the hill, and working slowly to 



TITGOMES LETTERS. 

the top, seems a very discouraging process 
precisely at this point have thousands of young n 
made shipwreck of their lives. 

Let this be understood, then, at starting ; that 
the patient conquest of difficulties which rise in the 
regular and legitimate channels of business and en- 
terprise, is not only essential in securing the suc- 
cesses which you seek, but it is essential to that 
preparation of your mind requisite for the enjoy- 
ment of your successes, and for retaining them 
when gained. It is the general rule of Providence, 
the world over, and in ah time, that unearned suc- 
cess is a curse. It is the rule of Providence, that 
the process of earning success shall be the prepare 
tion for its conservation and enjoyment. So, day 
by day, and week by week ; so, month after month, 
and year after year, work on, and in that process 
gain strength and symmetry, and nerve and know- 
ledge, that when success, patiently and bravely 
worked for, shall come, it may find you prepared 
to receive it and keep it. The development which 
you will get in this brave and patient labor, will 
prove itself, in the end, the most valuable of your 
successes. It will help to make a man of you. It 
will give you power and self-reliance. It will give 
you not only self-respect, but the respect of your 
fellows and the public. 

Never allow yourself to be seduced from this 
course. You will hear of young men who have 
made fortunes in some wild speculations. Pity 
them ; for they will almost certainly lose their 



j GETTING THE BIGHT START. 

easily won success. Do not be in a hurry for any- 
thing. Are you in love with some dear girl, whom 
you would make your wife ? Give Angelina Matil- 
da to understand that she must wait ; and if Ange- 
lina Matilda is really the good girl you take her to 
be, she will be sensible enough to tell you to choose 
your time. You cannot build well without first laying 
a good foundation ; and for you to enter upon a bu- 
siness which you have not patiently and thoroughly 
learned, and to marry before you have won a char- 
acter, or even the reasonable prospect of a compe- 
tence, is ultimately to bring your house down about 
the ears of Angelina Matilda, and such pretty chil- 
dren as she may give you. If, at the age of thirty 
years, you find yourself established in a business 
which pays you with certainty a living income, you 
are to remember that God has blessed you beyond 
the majority of men. 

In saying what I have said to you in this letter, I 
have had no wish to make of you pattern young 
men ; but of this I will speak more fully hereafter. 
The fashion plates of the magazines bear no strik- 
ing resemblance to the humanity which we meet in 
the streets. I only seek to give you the principles and 
the spirit which should animate you, without any 
attempt or desire to set before you the outlines of 
the life I would have you lead. In fact, if there 
are detestable things which I despise above all 
other things detestable, they are the patterns made 
for young men, and the young men made after 
them. I would have you carry all your individual- 



GETTING THE RIGHT START. 21 

ity with you, all your blood well purified, all your 
passions well controlled and made tributary to the 
motive forces of your nature ; all your manhood, 
enlarged, ennobled, and uncorrupted ; all your 
piety, rendering your whole being sensitively alive 
to your relations to God and man ; all your honor, 
your affections, and your faculties — all these, and 
still hold yourselves strictly amenable to those laws 
which confine a true success to the strong and con- 
stant hand of patient aciiievemet. 



LETTER II 

Female Society — The Woman for a Wife. 

O woman ! lovely woman ! Nature made thee 

To temper man ; we had been brutes without you. 
Angels are painted fair to look like you. 

Otway. 

When I said I would die a bachelor, I did not think that I should 
live till I were married. Shakspeaee. 



IN many of the books addressed to young men, a 
great deal is said about the purifying and elevat- 
ing influences of female society. Sentimental 
young men affect this kind of reading, and if any- 
where in it they can find countenance for the pol- 
icy of early marriage, they are delighted. Now, 
while I will be the last to deny the purifying and 
elevating influence of pure and elevated women, I 
do deny that there is anything in in discriminate 
devotion to female society, which makes a man bet- 
ter or purer. Suppose a man cast away on the 



TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 23 

Cannibal Islands, and not in sufficiently good flesh 
to excite the appetites of the gentle epicureans 
among whom he has fallen. Suppose him, in faet, 
to be " received into society," and made the pri- 
vate secretary of a king without a liberal education. 
Suppose, after awhile, he feels himself subsiding in- 
to a state of barbarism, and casts around for some 
redeeming or conservative influence. At this moment 
it occurs to him that in the trunk on which he sailed 
ashore were a number of books. He flies to the trunk, 
and, in an ecstasy of delight, discovers that among 
them is a volume addressed to young men. He 
opens it eagerly, and finds the writer to declare 
that next to the Christian religion, there is nothing 
that will tend so strongly to the elevation and pur- 
ification of young men as female society. He ac- 
cordingly seeks the society of woman, and drinks 
in the marvellous influences of their presence. He 
finds them unacquainted with some of the most 
grateful uses of water, and in evident ignorance of 
the existence of ivoiy combs. About what year of 
the popular era is it to be supposed that he will ar- 
rive at a desirable state of purification and perfec- 
tion ? 

Now, perhaps you do not perceive the force of 
this illustration. Let us get at it, then. TYhen 
you find yourself shut out from all female society 
except that which is beneath you, that society will 
do you just as much and no more good than that of 
the fan* cannibals, especially if it be young. If, in 
all this society, you can find one old woman of six- 



24 FEMALE SO GIETT. 

ty, who has common sense, genial good-nature, ex- 
perience, some reading, and a sympathetic heart, 
cherish her as you would her weight in gold, but 
let the young trash go. VjTou will hear nothing 
from them but gossip and nonsense, and you will 
only get disgusted with the world and yourself. 
Inspiration to higher and purer lif e always comes 
from above a man ; and female society can only 
elevate and purify a man when it is higher and 
purer than he is. In the element of purity, I 
doubt not that women generally are superior to men, 
but it is very largely a negative or unconscious ele- 
ment, and has not the power and influence of a pos- 
itive virtue. 

Therefore, whenever you seek for female society, 
as an agency in the elevation of your tastes, the 
preservation of your morals, and the improvement 
of your mind, seek for that which is above you. I 
do not counsel you to treat with rudeness or studied 
neglect such inferior female society as you are 
obliged to come in contact with. On the contrary, 
you owe such society a duty. You should stimulate 
it, infuse new life into it, if possible, and do for 
it what you would have female society do for your- 
self. 

This matter of seeking female society above your- 
self you should carry still further. Never content 
yourself with the idea of having a common-place 
wife. You want one who will stimulate you, stir 
you up, keep you moving, show you your weak 
points, and make something of you. Don't fear 



TITCOMES LETTERS. 25 

that you cannot get such a wife. I very well re- 
member the reply which a gentleman who happened 
to combine the qualities of wit and common sense, 
made to a young man who expressed a fear that a 
certain young lady of great beauty and attainments 
would dismiss him, if he should become serious. 
" My friend," said the wit, " infinitely more beau- 
tiful and accomplished women than she is, have! 
married infinitely uglier and meaner men than you 
are." And such is the fact. ; If you are honest and 
honorable, if your character is spotless, if you are 
enterprising and industrious, if you have some 
grace and a fair degree of sense, and if you love 
appreciatingly and truly, you can marry almost 
anybody worth your having. So, to encourage 
yourself, carry in your memory the above aphorism 
reduced to a form something like this : " Infinitely 
finer women than I ever expect to marry, have 
loved and married men infinitely meaner than I 
am." 

The apprehensions of women are finer and quick- 
er than those of men. With equal early advan- 
tages, the woman is more of a woman at eighteen 
than a man is a man at twenty-one. After marriage, 
as a general thing, the woman ceases to acquire. 
Now, I do not say that this is necessary, or that it 
should be the case, but I simply state a general 
fact. The woman is absorbed in family cares, or 
perhaps devotes from ten to twenty years to the 
bearing and rearing of children-\the most dignified, 
deli&htful, and honorable office of her life. This 



26 TITCOM&S LETTERS. 

consumes her time, and, in a great multitude of 
instances, deprives her of intellectual culture. 

In the meantime, the man is out, engaged in 
business. He comes in daily contact with minds 
stronger and sharper than his own. He grows and 
matures, and in ten years from the date of his mar- 
riage, becomes, in reality, a new man. Now if he 
was so foolish to marry a woman because she 
had a pretty form and face, or sweet eyes, or an 
amiable disposition, or a pleasant temper, or wealth, 
he will find that he has passed entirely by his wife, 
and that she is really no more a companion for him 
than a child would be. X I know of but few sadder 
Bights in this world than that of mates whom the 
passage of years has mis-mated. - A woman ought 
to have a long start of a man, and then, ten to one, 
the man will come out ahead in the race of a long 
life. 

I suppose that in every young man's mind there 
exists the hope and the expectation of marriage. 
When a young man pretends to me that he has no 
wish to marry, and that he never expects to marry, 
I always infer one of two things : that he lies, and 
is really very anxious for marriage, or that his heart 
has been polluted by association with unworthy 
women. In a thousand cases we shall not find 
three exceptions to this rule. A young man who, 
with any degree of earnestness, declares that he in- 
tends never to marry, confesses to a brutal nature 
or perverted morals. 

But how shall a good wife be won ? I know 



FEMALE SOCIETY. 27 

that men naturally shrink from the attempt to ob- 
tain companions who are their superiors ; but they 
will find that really intelligent women, who possess 
the most desirable qualities, are uniformly mc 
and hold their charms in modest estimation. 
What such women most admire in men is gallantry ; 
not the gallantry of courts and fops, but boldness, 
courage, devorion, decision, and refined civility. 
A man's bearing wins ten superior women where 
his boots and brains win one. If a man stand be- 
fore a woman with respect for himself and fearless- 
ness of her, his suit is half won. The rest may 
safely be left to the parties most interested. There- 
fore, never be afraid of a woman. Women are the 
most harmless and agreeable creatures in the 
world, to a man who shows that he has got a man's 
soul in hin^Jf you have not got the spirit in you 
to come up to a test like this, you have not got 
that in you which most pleases a high-souled wo- 
man, and you will be obliged to content yourself 
with the sinxple girl who, in a quiet way, is endeav- 
oring to attract and fasten you^-^^" 

But don't be in a hurry about the matter. Don't 
get into a feverish longing for marriage. It isn't 
creditable to you. Especially don't imagine that 
any disajDp ointment in love which takes place be- 
fore you are twenty- one years old will be of any ma- 
terial damage to you. The truth is, that before a 
man is twenty-five years old he does not know what 
mts himself. So don't be in a hurry. The more 
a man you become, and the more of manlines? 



28 TITCOMFS LETTERS. 

you become capable of exhibiting in your associa- 
tion with women, the better wife you will be able 
to obtain ; and one year's possession of the heart 
and hand of a really noble specimen of her sex, is 
worth nine hundred and ninety-nine years' posses- 
sion of a sweet creature with two ideas in her head, 
and nothing new to say about either of them. 
" Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Ca 
thay. " So don't be in a hurry, I say again. (jTou 
don't want a wife now, and you have not the 
slightest idea of the kind of wife you will want by- 
and-by. Go into female society if you can find 
that which will improve you, but not otherwise. 
You can spend your time better. Seek the society 
of good men. That is often more accessible to you 
than the other, and it is through that' mostly that 
you will find your way to good female society. 

If any are disposed to complain of the injustice 
to woman of advice like this, and believe that it in- 
volves a wrong to her, I reply that not the slightest 
wrong is intended. Thorough appreciation of a 
good woman, on the part of a young man, is one 
of the strongest recommendations to her favor. 
The desire of such a man to possess and associate 
his life with such a woman, gives evidence of 
qualities, aptitudes, and capacities which entitle 
him to any woman's consideration and respect. 
There is something good in him ; and however un- 
cultivated he may be — however rude in manner, 
and rough in person — he only needs development 
to become worthy of her, in some respects, at least. 



FEMALE SOCIETY. 29 

I shall not quarrel with a woman who desires a 
husband superior to herself, for I know it will be 
well for her to obtain such an one, if she will be 
stimulated by contact with a higher mind to a bright- 
er and broader development. At the same time 
I must believe that for a man to marry his inferior, 
is to call upon himself a great misfortune ; to de- 
prive himself of one of the most elevating and re- 
fining influences which can possibly affect him. I 
therefore believe it to be the true policy of every 
young man to aim high in his choice for a compan- 
ion. I have previously given a reason for this 
policy, and both that and this conspire to establish 
the soundness of my counsel. 

One thing more : not the least important, but 
the last in this letter. No woman without piety in 
her heart is fit to be the companion of any man. You 
may get in your wife, beauty, amiability, spright- 
liness, wit, accomplishments, wealth, and learning, 
but if that wife have no higher love then herself 
and yourself, she is a poor creature. She cannot 
elevate you above mean aims and objects, she can- 
not educate her children properly, she cannot in 
hours of adversity sutsain and comfort you, she 
cannot bear with patience your petulance induced 
by the toils and vexations of business, and she will 
never be safe against the seductive temptations of 
gaiety and dress. 

Then, again, a man who has the prayers of a 
pious wife, and knows that he has them — upheld 
by heaven, or by a refined sense of obligation and 



30 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

gratitude — can rarely become a very bad man. A 
daily prayer from the heart of a pure and pious 
wife, for a husband engrossed in the pursuits of 
wealth or fame, is a chain of golden words that 
links his name every day with the name of God. 
He may snap it three hundred and sixty-five times 
in a year, for many years, but the chances are that 
in time he will gather the sundered filaments, an* 1 r 
seek to re-unite them in an everlasting bond 



LETTER m. 
Manners and Dress. 

So over violent, or over civil, 

That every man with him has God or devil. 

Dktden 

Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, 

But not expressed in fancy; rich, nor gaudy; 
For the apparel oft proclaims the man. 

Shakspeabe. 

IT is well for young men to obtain, at the very 
start of their career, some idea of the value of 
politeness. Some cannot be otherwise than urbane. 
They are born so. One can kick them roundly and 
soundly, and they will not refuse to smile, if it be 
done good naturedly. They dodge all corners by a 
necessity of their nature. If their souls had only 
corporeal volume, we could see them making their 
way through a crowd, like nice little spaniels, scar- 
ing nobody, running between nobody's legs, but 
winding along shrinkingly and gracefully, seeing a 



32 TITCOMKS LETTERS. 

master in every man, and thus flattering every 
man's vanity into good nature, but really spoiling 
their reputation as reliable, dogs by their undis- 
criminating and universal complaisance. There is 
a self-forgetfulness which is so deep as to be below 
self-respect, and such instances as we occasionally 
meet with should be treated compassionately, like 
cases of idiocy or insanity, except when found in 
connexion with the post-oillce department or among 
hotel waiters. 

But puppyism is not really politeness. The gen- 
uine article is as necessary to success, and particu- 
larly to an enjoyable success, as integrity, or in- 
dustry or any other indispensable thing. All 
machinery ruins itself by friction, without the 
presence of a lubricating fluid. Politeness, or civ- 
ility, or urbanity, or whatever we may choose to 
call it, is the oil which preserves the machinery of 
society from destruction. We are obliged to bend 
to one another—to step aside and let another pass, 
to ignore this or that personal peculiarity, to 
speak pleasantly when iritated, and to do a great 
many things to avoid abrasion and collision. In 
other words, in a world of selfish interests and pur- 
suits, where every man is pursuing his own special 
good, w^e must mask our real designs in studied po- 
liteness, or mingle them with real kindness, in order 
to elevate the society of men above the society of 
wolves. I Young men generally would doubtless be 
thoroughly astonished if they could comprehend at 
a single glance how greatly their personal happi- 



MANNERS AND BRB83. 33 

ness, popularity. prosperity, and usefulness depend 
on their niaunrrs. 

I know young men who, in the ge of their 

duties, imagine that if they go through them with 
a literal performance, they are doing all tha: 
undertake to do. You will never see a smile upon 
then* faces, nor hear a genial word of good f ellc" 
from their lips; and from the manner in which their 
labor is performed you would never learn that they 
were engaged in hitereourse with human beinga 
They carry the same manner and the same spin 
to the counting-room that they do into the 
kennel or Le. Everybody hates such y 

men as these, and recoils from ah contact with them. 
If they have business with them, they close it as 
soon as possible, and gei out of their presence. A 
man who, having got his vessel under headway on 
the voyage of life, takes a straight course, minding 
nothing for the man-of-war that lies in his path, or 
the sloop that crosses his bow. or the fishing smack3 
game where hr seeks nothing but a pas- 
sage, or interposing rocks or islands, will be very 
sure to get terribly rubbed before he gets fchi 
— and he ought to be. 

I despise servility, but true and uniform polite- 
Le glory of any young man. It should be a 
politeness full of fran k v I nature, unob- 

trusive and constant, and uniform in its exhibition 
to every class of men. The young man who is 
overwhelmingly polite to a celebrity or a m 
and rude to a poor Irishman because he is a poor 



34 TUvOMB'S LETTERS. 

Irishman, deserves to be despised. That style of 
manners which combines self-respect with respect 
for the rights and feelings of others, especially if it 
be warmed up by the fires of a genial heart, is a 
thing to be coveted and cultivated, and it is a thing 
that pays alike in cash and comfort. 

The talk of manners introduces us naturally to 
dress and personal appearance. I believe in dress. 
I believe that it is the duty of all men — young and 
old — to make their persons, so far as practicable or 
possible, agreeable to those with whom they are 
thrown into association. I mean by this that they 
shall not offend by singularity, nor by slovenliness ; 
that they shall "make a conscience " of clean boots 
and finger-nails, change their linen twice a week, 
and not show themselves in shirt-sleeves if they can 
help it. Let ^o man know by your dress what 
your business ±s. You dress your person, not your 
trade. You are, if you know enough, to mould the 
fashion of the time to your own personal peculiar- 
ities — to make it your servant, and not allow it 
to be your master. Never dress in extremes. Let 
there always be a hint in your dress that you know 
the style, but, for the best of reasons, disregard its 
more extreme demands. The best possible impres- 
sion that you can make by your dress is to make no 
separate impression at all ; but so to harmonize its 
material and shape with your personality, that it 
becomes tributary in the general effect, and so ex- 
clusively tributary that people cannot tell after 
seeing you what kind of clothes you wear. They 






MAXXERS AXB LBEzS. Zo 

will only remember that you look well . and somehow 

: 
I suppose that I shall be met here with a pr 

employers, and a kind of protest from the 
vecL Counsel to dress well is dangerous, is 
it ; But everybody now dresses extravagantly ; 
and. as extravagant dressing is usually very far from 
good dressing, I think that the danger of exciting 
greater extravagance is very small. It may be de- 
scending into pretty small particulars, but it is 
:• to say that some men can dress better on 
rs a year than others can on one hundred, 
Eor reasons which it is my duty to disclose. 
There was something in the doctrine of the loafer 
who n_ : 1 that ;; extremes justify the me 

illustrating his] lion by wearing faultless hat 

and boots and leaving the rest of his person in 
. but he had not touched the real philosophy 
of the matter. 

There is on every man what may be called a 
dress centre — a nucleus from which the rest of the 
should be developed, and unfoldecL This 
dress-centre, or primary dress idea, is different in 
different persons, but it is always above the waist. 
The cravat, the vest, the hat, the bosom, the coat- 
collar, may either of them be this idea. It is al- 
to locate it about the neck and chest. A 
iful cravat, sustaining a faultless dicky, is 
about all a man can stand without damage, in the 
way of elegant dress. This should form the cen- 
tre. The vest should harmonize, but be modest, 



36 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

and all the other robing should be shaded off, until 
there is not an obtrusive feature. Extremities will 
then only be noticed. These should be faultlessly 
dressed, but in a manner rather to satisfy than at- 
tract attention. Everything should be subordin- 
ated to this idea ; the whole dress should bow to 
the cravat. Any man who has made dress a study 
knows very well that ten dollars a year, spent 
about the neck, will go further than fifty dollars 
spread upon the person. Coarsest clothes, devel- 
oped from an elegant neck-tie, or an elegant cen- 
tral idea of any kind, become elegant themselves, 
and receive and evolve a glory which costs absolute- 
ly nothing at all, except a few brains, some consid- 
- eration, and the reading of this letter. 

One sees the demonstration of this in travelling. 
We meet multitudes from all quarters and of dif- 
ferent nationalities. One, and he is usually a Yan- 
kee, wears the best of broadcloth, and the costliest 
of coats, and looks vulgar ; while another, with a 
single stamp of good taste upon him, at some cen- 
tral point, is a gentleman at half price. Bich 
clothes are really a sign of mental poverty. Let 
the secret of good dressing be thoroughly learned, 
and we shall hear comparatively little of the* cost 
of dress. Let each young man choose his central 
idea, plant it and develop it ; and if he has good 
common sense he will find that he can dress better 
than he ever could before, with the expenditure of 
half the money it has usually cost him. 



LETTER IV. 

Bad Rah its. 

There's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple : 
If the ill spirit have so fair a house 
Good things will strive to dwell with't. 

Shaxspeaex. 

He that has light within his own clear breast 
May sit i' the centre and enjoy bright day ; 
But he that hides a dark scul and foul thoughts, 
Benighted walks under the mid-day sun. 

UJXTOK. 

XT is entirely natural for people to form habit 
that if bad habit 3 be avoided, the good ones 
-will generally take care of themselves. I had no 
intention, when I commenced these letters, of say- 
ing anything upon dogmatic theolosry, but I take 
the liberty of suggesting to those who are in: 
ested in this kind of thing that if there be any- 
thing that demonstrates total depravity, it is the 
readiness with which young men imbibe bad ha- 
bits. I have seen original sin in the shape of ' ' a 
short six ; ' sticking out of the mouth of a lad of ten 
years. It is strange what particular pains boys and 



S3 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

young men "will take to learn to do that which will 
make them miserable, ruin their health, render 
them disgusting to their friends, and damage their 
reputation. 

Some of the fashionable bad habits of the day 
are connected with the use of tobacco. $ Here is a 

A 

drug that a young man is obliged to become accus- 
tomed to before he can tolerate either the taste or 
the effect of it. lb is a rank vegetable poison ; and 
in the unaccustomed animal produces vertigo, f aint- 
ness, and horrible sickness. Yet young men per- 
severe in the use of it until they can endure it, and 
then until they love it. They go about the streets 
with cigars in their mouths, or into society with 
breath sufficiently offensive to drive all unpe/verted 
nostrils before them. They chew tobacco-^roll up 
huge wads of the vile drug and stuff their cheeks 
with them. I They ejaculate their saliva upon the 
sidewahc, in the store, in spittoons which become 
incorporated stenches, in dark comers of railroad 
cars to stain the white skirts of unsuspecting women, 
in lecture-rooms and churches, upon fences, and into 
stoves that hiss with anger at the insult. And 
the quids after they are ejected ! They are to be 
found in odd corners, in out-of-the-way places — 
great boulders, boluses, bulbs ! Horses stumble 
over them, dogs bark at them ; they poison young 
shade trees, and break down the constitution of 
sweepers. This may be an exaggeration of the 
facts, but not of the disgust with which one writes 
of them. 



BAB HABITS. 39 

Now, young men, just think of this thing ! You 
are born into the world with a sweet breath. At 
a proper age, you accquire a good set of teeth. 
Why will you make of one a putrescent exhalation, 
and of the other a set of yellow pegs ? A proper 
description of the habit of chewing tobacco would 
exhaust the filthy adjectives of the language, and 
sxjolL the adjectives themselves for further use ; and 
yet, you will acquire the habit, and persist in 
it after it is acquired ! It is very singular that 
young men will adopt a habit of which every man 
who is its victim is ashamed. There is, probably, 
no tobacco-chewer in the world who would advise a 
young man to commence this habit. I have never 
seen a slave of tobacco who did not regret his bond- 
age ; yet, against all advice, against nausea and 
disgust, against cleanliness, against every consider- 
ation of health and conif 01% thousands every year 
bow the neck to this drug, and consent to wear 
its repulsive yoke. They will chew it ; they will 
smoke it in cigars and pipes until their bed-rooms 
and shops cannot be breathed in, and until their 
breath is as rank as the breath of a foul beast, and 
their clothes have the odor of the sewer. Some of 
them take snuff ; cram fiery weed up their nostrils to 
irritate that subtle sense which rarest flowers were 
made to feed — in all this working against God, abus- 
ing nature, perverting sense, injuring health, plant- 
ing the seeds of disease, and insulting the decencies 
of life and the noses of the world. 

So much for the nature of the habit : and I 



40 TITCOMWS LETTERS. 

would stop here, but for the fact that I am in earn 
est, and wish to present every motive in my power 
to prevent young men from forming the habit, or 
persuade them to abandon it. The habit of using 
tobacco is expensive. A clerk on a modest salary ' 
has no right to be seen with a cigar in his mouth. 
Three cigars a day, at five cents apiece, amount to 
more than fifty dollars a year. Can you afford it ? 
You know you cannot. You know that to do this you 
have either got to run in debt or steal. Therefore I 
say that you have no business to be seen with a cigar 
in your mouth. It is presumptive evidence against 
your moral character. 

Did it ever occur to you what you are, what you 
are made for, whither you are going ? That beauti- 
ful body of yours, in whose construction infinite 
wisdom exhausted the resources of its ingenuity, is 
the temple of the soul that shall live for ever, a 
companion of angels, a searcher into the deep 
things of God, a being allied in essence to the di- 
vine. I say the body is the temple, or the taber- 
nacle, of such a being as this ; and what do you 
think of stuffing the front door of such a building 
full of the most disgusting weeds that you can find, 
or setting a slow match to it, or filling the chim- 
neys with snuff? It looks to me much like an en- 
deavor to smoke out the tenant, or to insult him in 
such a manner as to induce him to quit the prem- 
ises. You really ought to be ashamed of such be- 
havior. A clean mouth, a sweet breath, unstained 
teeth, and inoffensive clothing — are not these treas- 



BAD HABITS. 41 

ures worth preserving ? Then throw away tobacco, 
and all thoughts of it, at once and for ever. Be a 
man. Be decent, and be thankful to me for talking 
so plainly to you. 

But there are other bad habits besides the use of 
tobacco. There is the habit of using strong drink, 
— not the habit of getting drunk, with most young 
men, but the habit of taking drink occasionally in 
its milder forms — of playing with a small appetite 
that only needs sufficient playing with to make you 
a demon or a dolt. You think you are safe. I 
know you are not safe, if you drink at all ; and 
when you get offended with the good friends who 
warn you of your danger, I know you are a fool. I 
know that the grave swallows daily, by scores, 
drunkards, every one of whom thought he was 
safe while he was forming his appetite. But this 
is old talk. A young man in this age who forms 
the habit of drinking, or puts himself in danger 
of forming the habit, is usually so weak that it 
doesn't pay to save him. 

I pass by profanity. That is too offensive and 
vulgar a habit for any man who reads a respectable 
book to indulge in. I pass by this, I say, to come 
to a habit more destructive than any I have con- 
templated. 

Young man ! you who are so modest in the pres- 
ence of women, — so polite and amiable ; you who 
are invited into families where there are pure and 
virtuous girls ; you who go to church, and seem to 
be such a pattern young man ; you who veiy possi- 



42 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

bly neitlier smoke, nor chew, nor snuff, nor swear. 
nor drink — you have one habit ten times worse than 
all these put together, -fa habit that makes you a 
whited sepulchre, fair without, but within full of 
dead men's bones and all uncleanness. You have 
a habit of impure thought, that poisons the very 
springs of your hie. It may lead you into lawless 
indulgences, or it may not. So far as your charac- 
ter is concerned, it makes little difference. A 
young man who cherishes impure images, and in- 
dulges in impure conversations with his associates, 
is poisoned. There is rottenness in him. He is not 
to be trusted. Hundreds of thousands of men are 
living in unhappiness and degradation to-day who 
owe their unhappy lives to an early habit of impure 
thought. To a young man who has become poi- 
soned in this way, women all appear to be vicious 
or weak ; and when a young man loses his respect 
for the sex made sacred by the relations of mother 
and sister, he stands upon the crumbling edge of 
ruin. His sensibilities are killed, and his moral 
nature almost beyond the reach of regeneration. I 
believe it to be true that a man who has lost his be- 
lief in woman has, as a general thing, lost his faith 
in God. ) 

The only proper way to treat such a habit as this 
is to fly from it— discard it — expel it — fight it to 
the death. Impure thought is a moral drug quite 
as seductive and poisonous to the soul as tobacco is 
to the body. It perverts the tone of every fibre of the 
{?oul. One should have more respect for his body 



BAB HABITS. 43 

than to make it the abode of toads and lizards and un- 
clean reptiles of all sorts. The whole matter resolves 
itself into this : A young man is not fit for life until 
he is clean — clean and healthy, body and soul, with 
no tobacco in his mouth, no liquor in his stomach, 
no oath on his tongue, no snuff in his nose, and no 
thought in his heart which if exposed would send 
him sneaking into darkness from the presence of 
good women. I know a man who believes that the 
regeneration of the world is to be brought about by 
a change of diet. If he will add the policy of ut- 
ter cleanhness to his scheme, I will agree not to 
quarrel with him. 



LETTER V. 

The Blessings of Poverty — Office and Effect of a Pro- 
fession. 

The labor we delight in physics pain. 

Shakspere. 

Worth makes the man, and want of it the fellow ; 
The rest is all but leather and prunello. 

Pope. 

IF there is anything in the world that a young 
man should be more grateful for than another, 
it is the poverty which necessitates starting lif e un- 
der very great disadvantages. Poverty is one of 
the best tests -m human quality in existence. A 
triumph over it is like graduating with honor from 
West Point. It demonstrates stuff and stamina. 
It is a certificate of worthy labor, faithfully per- 
formed. A young man who cannot stand this test 
is not good for anything. He can never rise above 
a drudge or a pauper. A young man who cannot 
feel his will harden as the yoke of poverty presses 



THE BLESSINGS OF P VEE TY. 45 

upon him, and his pluck rise with every difficulty 
that poverty throws in his way, may as well retire 
into some corner, and hide himself. Poverty saves 
a thousand times more men than it ruins, for it only 
ruins those who are not particularly worth saving, 
while it saves multitudes of those whom wealth 
would have ruined. If any young man who reads 
this letter is so unfortunate as to be rich, I give him 
my pity. I pity you, my rich young friend, be- 
cause you are in danger. You lack one great stim- 
ulus to effort and excellence which your poor com- 
panion possesses. You will be very apt, if you 
have a soft spot in your head, to think yourself 
above him, and that sort of thing makes you mean, 
and injures you. "With f ull pockets and full stomach, 
and good linen and broadcloth on your back, your 
heart and soul will get plethoric, and in the race of 
life you will find yourself surpassed by all the poor 
boys around you, before you know it. 

No, my boy, if you are poor, thank God and 
take courage ; for he intends to give you a chance 
to make something of yourself. If you had plenty 
of money, ten chances to one it would spoil you for 
all useful purposes. Do you lack education ? Have 
you been cut short in the- text books ? Kemem- 
ber that education, like some other things, does 
not consist in the multitude of things a man pos- 
sesses. .What can you do ? That is the question 
that settles the business for you. Do you know 
your business ? Do you know men, and how to 
deal with them ? Has your mind, by any means 



46 TITCOMBS LETTERS. 

whatsoever, received that discipline which gives .0 
its action power and facilty ? If so, then you are 
more of a man, and a thousand times better educated, * 
than the fellow who graduates from a college with 
his brain full of stuff that he cannot apply to the 
practical business of life — stuff the acquisition of 
which has been in no sense a disciplinary process, 
so far as he is concerned. There are very few men 
in this world less than thirty years of age, and un - 
married, who can afford to be rich. One of the 
greatest benefits to be reaped from great financial 
disasters, is the saving of a large crop of young 
men. 

In regard to the choice of a profession, that is 
your business, and not mine, nor that of any of 
your friends. If you take to a trade or profession, 
don't be persuaded out of it, until you are perfect- 
ly satisfied that you are not adapted to it. You will 
receive all sorts of the most excellent advice, but 
you must remember that if you follow it, and it 
leads you into a profession that starves you, those 
who gave you the advice never feel bound to give 
you any money. You have got to take care of 
yourself in this world, and you may as well 
your own way of doing it, always remembei -jLat 
it is not your trade nor your profession whicl: aakes 
you respectable. This leads me to a ma' r that 
I may as well dispose of here as anywhe^ - 1 

I propose to explain what I meant in e pre^i^u^ 
letter by the counsel to" 4 'let no man know by your 
dress what your business is. You dress your per- 



THE BLESSINGS OF PO FEE TT. il 

eon, not your trade." As the proper explanation 
of this involves a very important principle, I will de- 
vote the rest of this letter to its development and 
illustration. The fault found with this counsel is 
that it has alvv T ays been considered best to dress ac- 
cording to one's business and position. 

Manhood, and profession or handicraft, are en- 
tirely different things ; and I wish particularly that 
every young man engaged in reading these letters 
should understand the reason why. God makes 
men, and men make blacksmiths, tailors, farmers, 
horse jockeys, tradesmen of all sorts, governors, 
judges, &c. The offices of men may be more or 
less important, and of higher or lower quality, but 
manhood is a higher possession than office. An 
occupation is never an end of life. It is an instru- 
ment put into our hands, or taken into our hands, 
by which to gain for the body the means of living 
until sickness or old age robs it of life, and we pass 
on to the world for which this is a preparation. 
However thoroughly acquired and assiduously fol- 
lowed, a trade is something to be held at arm's 
length. I can illustrate what I mean by placing 
• side' two horses, — one fresh from the stall, 
w :ry hair in its right place, his head up and 

mane f ^ing, and another that has been worked in the 
same i uess every day for three years, until the skiu 
is ba:» ' each hip and thigh, an inflamed abrasion 
glo\ each side of the back-bone where the 

hard saa^e-pad rests, a severe gall-mark spreads 
its brown patch under the breast collar, and all the 



48 TITCOMBS LETTERS. 

other marks of an abused horse abound. Now. a 
trade, or a profession, will wear into a man as a 
harness wears into a horse. One can see the 
1 trade mark " on almost every soul and body met 
in the street. A trade has taken some men by the 
shoulders and shaken their humanity out of them. 
It has so warped the natures of others that they 
might be wet down and set in the sun to dry a 
thousand times without being warped back. 

Thus, I say, a man's trade or profession should 
be kept at arm's length. It should not be allowed 
to tyrannize over him, to mould him, to crush him. 
It should not occupy the whole of his attention. 
So far from this, it should be regarded, in its ma- 
terial aspect, at least, only as a means for the de- 
velopment of manhood. The great object of living 
is the attainment of true manhood — the cultivation 
of every power of the soul and of every high sjDirit- 
ual quality, naturally inherent or graciously super- 
added. The trade is beneath the man, and should 
be kept there. "With this idea in your minds — and 
you may be very sure that it is the correct idea — 
just look around you, and see how almost every- 
body has missed it. You and I both know physi- 
cians whose mental possessions, beyond their know- 
lege of drugs and diseases, are not worth anything. 
"We are acquainted with lawyers who are never seen 
out of their offices, who live among pigeon-holes 
and red tape, and busy their minds with quirks and 
quarrels so unremittingly, that they have not a 
thought for other subjects. They arc not men at 



THE BLESSINGS OF PO VERTY. 19 

aU ; they are nothing but lawyers. Often we find 
not more than five whole men in a town of rive 
thousand inhabitants. Those who pass for men, 
and who really do get married and have families, 
are a hundred to one fractional men, or exclusively 
machines. 

Ehhu Burritt cultivated the man that was in him 
until his trade and his blacksmith's shop would not 
stay with him. They ceased to be useful to him. 
He could get a living in a way that was better for 
him. Benjamin Franklin was an excellent printer, 
but he used his trade only as a means. The devel- 
opment of his mind and his manhood went on abov« 
it Printing with him was not an end of life. If it had 
been, we should have missed his words of wisdom ? 
some one else would have built the kite that ex- 
changed the first kiss with electricity, and less able 
men would have been set to do the work which he 
did so creditably in the management of his coun- 
try's affairs. It is not necessary that you be 
learned blacksmiths or philosophical and diploma- 
tic printers, but it is necessary that you be a man 
before your calling, behind your calling, above your 
calling, outside of your calling, and inside of it ; and 
that that calling modify your character no more 
than it would were it your neighbor's. 

If I have made my point plain to you, you can 
readily see that I attach veiy little value to the dis- 
tinctions in society based on callings, and still less to 
d on office. If a man be a man, let him 
thank his stare that t a justice of the p. 



50 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

Of all the appetites tliat curse young men, the ap- 
petite for office seems to me to be the silliest and 
the meanest. There is nothing which fills me with 
greater disgust than to see a young man eager for 
the poor distinction which office confers. An of- 
fice seeker, for the sake of honor, is constitutionally, 
necessarily, mean. I have seen men begin at 
twenty-one as prudential committees in small 
school districts, and stick to office until everybody 
was sick of them. "Whether it rained porridge or 
potatoes, paving stones or pearls, their dish was 
always out. They and their families always had 
to be cared for. 

Office always brings obligation and a certain 
kind of slavery. It brings something more than 
this — it brings insanity. A young man who allows 
himself to get a taste of it very rarely recovers. It 
is like tobacco, or opium, or brandy, producing a 
morbid appetite ; and we need all through the na- 
tion, a new society of reform. There should be a 
pledge circulated, and everywhere signed, promis- 
ing total abstinence from office-seeking. To this 
every young man should put his name. There are 
chronic cases that may be considered hopeless, but 
the young man can be saved. 

Do not let me be misunderstood ; I have spoken 
Dx the thirst for office for the sake of office. My 
belief is that office should neither be sought for 
nor lightly refused. The curse of our country is that 
office-seekers have made place so contemptible that 
good men will not accept it, but so far keep them- 



THE BLESSINGS OF TO VEE TY. 51 

selves removed from politics that all the affairs of 
government fall into unworthy hands. When a 
young man is sought for to nil a responsible place 
in public affairs — sought for and selected on the 
ground of fitness — he should decide whether he 
owes that duty to the public, and perform it well 
if he does. Office was properly regarded in the 
" good old colony times. " Then it was considered 
a hind*ance to business, and almost or quite a 
hardship ; so much so that laws were passed, in 
some instances, compelling men to accept office, or 
pay a fine. So I would have you to do your duty 
to the public at all times, and especially in seeing 
that office-seekers, by profession or constant prac- 
tice, are crowded from the track, and worthy men 
pit, on. 



LETTER VI. 

Food and Physical Culture. 

Man is the noblest growth our realms supply, 
And souls are ripened in our northern sky. 

Mrs. Eakbattuj. 

I HAVE noticed that most writers of books ibr 
young men have a good deal to say about diet 
and regimen, and physical culture, and all that sort 
of thing, those knowing the least of these important 
subjects invariably being the most elaborate and 
specific in their treatment of them. There have 
been some uwful sins committed in this business. 
All the spare curses I accumulate I dedicate to 
those white-h'vered, hatchet-faced, thin-blooded, 
scrawny reformers, who prescribe sawdust puddings 
and plank beds, and brief sleep, and early walks, 
and short commons for the rising generation. I 
despise them ; and if there is a being who always 
touches the profoundest depths of my sympathy, it 
is a young man who has become a victim to their 
notions. It is a hard sight to see a young man 



FOOD AND PHYSICAL CULTUBK 53 

with the pluck all taken out of him by a meagre 
diet — his whole nature starved, degenerated, emas* 
culated. 

I propose to apply a little common sense to this 
business. If I have a likely Durham steer, which I 
wish to have grow into the full development of his 
breed, I keep him on something more than a 
. limited quantity of bog hay. I do not stir him up 
with a pitchfork before he has his nap out, and in- 
sist on his being driven ten miles before he has 
anything to eat. I do not take pains to give him 
the meanest bed I can find for him. I know per- 
fectly well that that animal will not grow up strong 
and sound, fat and full, the pride of the farm and 
the gem of the stall, unless I give him an abund- 
ance of the best food, a clean and comfortable 
place to sleep in, and just as long naps as he sees 
fit to take. The horse, which in its organization 
more nearly approaches man than the steer, is still 
more sensitive to the influence of generous living. 
How much pluck and spirit will a horse get out oi 
a ton of rye straw ? The truth is, that a good anc3 
abundant diet is not only essential to the highest 
physical health and development of men, but it 
modifies very importantly the development and 
manifestation of the soul. A man cannot acquire 
courage by feeding on theories and mill?:. An 
Englishman cannot fight without beef in his belly ; 
and no more can any of us. 

It may be objected to this that we do not wish 
for a great animal development in man. I say we 



54: TITCOMFS LETTERS. 

do. I declare tliat the more perfect a man caij 
make his animal nature the better. That animal na- 
ture is the associate — home — servant — of the soul. If 
it be not well developed, in all its organs and in all its 
functions, it will neither give a generous entertain- 
ment to the spiritual thing that dwells in it, nor 
serve it with vigor and efficiency. If strong meat 
nurses your passions, let it ; it does not nurse your 
passions any more than it nurses all the rest of you, 
and if you grow symmetrically where is the harm ? 
Besides, what would you be without passions ? 
They are the impelling forces of life. A man with 
no passion is as useless in the world as if he were 
without brains. He cannot even acquire the pos- 
session of virtue, but is obliged to content himself 
with innocence. If God gave passions to a man, 
he gave them to him for a natural, full develop- 
ment ; and the grandest type of man we see is 
that in which we find fully developed and thorough- 
ly trained passions ; and a soul which has not these 
among its motive forces is like a sailor out at sea, 
in a skiff without oars. This idea that the body 
is something to be contemned, that its growth and 
development must necessarily antagonize with 
the best growth and development of the soul, is 
essentially impious. No matter where it started — 
it is all wrong. A perverted and perverting passion 
is a fearful thing, but a passion in its place is like 
everything that God makes, "very good." 

I would have you properly understand this 
kind of talk, I counsel the use of no food that 



FOOD AXD PHYSICAL CULTURE. 55 

ten ds to the stimulation of one portion of your system 
more than another, but I ask you to remember that 
food is not too good for you, and that, unless 
you have a perverted appetite, there is very little 
danger of your eating too much of it. If I were to 
be charged with the sj^ecial mission of degrading a 
nation, in mind and body — stunting the form, and 
weakening in the same proportion the mental and 
moral nature — there is no way in which I could 
so readily accomplish my object as through food. 
No nation can preserve its vitality, and its tendency 
to progress, with a diet of pork and potatoes. 
Nothing but the cerealia and the ruminantia will 
do for this — nothing but bread and muscle. 

I wish I could take you to one of those institu- 
tions which will be found in nearly every State, 
where the outcast and pauper children are gathered 
for shelter, care, and culture. They come from 
gutters, where they have lived on garbage and cold 
potatoes. Their eyes are red around the edges and 
very weak, their muscles are flabby, their skin is 
lifeless in color and in fact. Their minds are as 
dull as the minds of brutes and their faces give the 
impression almost of idiotic stupidity. In six 
months, wheat and com bread give them a new 
body, and a new soul ; and it would be difficult to 
rind a brighter set of faces than nil those crowded 
halls and illuminate the noisy playgrounds. 

Therefore, I say to you, young man, however 

Ax you may deal with your back, be honest with 

your stomach. Feed well — as well as you can af- 



56 TITCOMB'S LETTERS, 

ford to feed. Sleep well. If Benjamin Franklin 
ever originated the maxim, "six hours of sleep for 
a man, seven for a woman, and eight for a fool," 
he ought uniformly to have practised by the rule 
of the last number. Young man, if you are a stu- 
dent, or engaged in any severe mental occupation, 
sleep just as long as you can sleep soundly. Lying 
in bed from laziness is another thing entirely. 

Sleep is a thing that bells have no more business 
to interfere with, than with prayers and sermons. 
God is re-creating us. We are as unconscious as 
we were before we were born ; and while he holds 
us there, feeding anew the springs of life, and in- 
fusing fresh fire into our brains, and preparing us 
for the work of another day, the pillow is as sacred 
as a sanctuary. If any fanatic has made you believe 
that it is good for you to be violently wakened from 
your sleep at an early hour, and to go out into the 
damp, raw air, morning after morning, with your 
fast unbroken, and your body unfortified by the 
stimulus of food, forget him and his counsels, and 
take the full measure of your rest. When you get 
your breakfast down, take your exercise if you 
have time, or wait until a Jater hour in the day. 
Just as much labor can be accomplished in ten 
hours as in fourteen, with more efficiency and less 
fatigue, when rest and bodily exercise are properly 
taken. 

But physical culture — what is that ? A very im- 
portant thing, I assure you. Some of you get this 
in your employments, and are growing up with 



FOOD AXD PHYSICAL CULTURE. 67 

manly frames and strong arms. But there are 

others who are coming up delicately, with spind- 
ling shanks, and narrow shoulders, and flat chests, 
and weak amis — great babies, with soft hands and 
soft muscles, and not enough of physical prowess 
to undertake to carry a disputed point with the 
cook in the kitchen. How a woman ever makes up 
her mind to love such a man as this is a mystery 
to me. jX. feminine man is a masculine monster,' 
and no woman wiih unperverted instincts can love 
and many him. A true woman loves a pah' of good 
strong arms, fastened to a pair of broad shoulders, 
for they can defend her, provide for her, and — but 
I wander from my subject. 

Physical culture perfects a very important por- 
tion of the work which good feeding begins. The 
best material supxDlied to the mouth, assimilated 
by the process of digestion, and carried by the 
blood to the muscles and all the other structures of 
the body, is essential ; but these organs, when con- 
structed and supplied, need not only thorough 
training for the development of power and the 
acquisition of facility, but for the preservation of 
their harmony and health. God sets all the little 
children playing for this. He lays the necessity of 
play upon them, and those restless little fellows that 
are always sliding, or skating, or wrestling, or 
running, are all inspired by a divine impulse. 
Those little brothers of yours who drive you half 
insane by their noise, who will not sit upon your 



os TlTCOMUs LETTEliS. 

knoe a minute without some fresh twist of their bod- 
ies, are discharging their primary Christian duties. 

A new world, tossed into space by the Creative 
Hand, informed with its laws of motion, and set spin- 
ning on its axis and careering around its orbit, 
never stops. It is only the boy who gets lazy as 
he grows older. God puts him in motion at first, 
and teaches him to use every physical power he 
possesses, and he does it faithfully at first. Child- 
ren who sit still do not five. The mission of play 
does not cease with childhood. When labor is not 
capable of doing for you what play has done, and 
when you have no regular task for your bodily 
powers, you are to play still. "Walking and riding, 
boxing and fencing, playing ball, pitching quoits, 
rowing and bowling — all these are as legitimate to 
the man as the simpler sports are to the boy, and 
are in a degree essential to his happiness and 
usefulness. 

I should be unjust to the age were I to omit 
the mention of a special point of " physical cul- 
ture " which has been long neglected. You find, 
as you come into man's estate, that hair has a ten- 
dency to grow upon your face. It is the mark by 
which God meant that men and women should be 
distinguished from each other in the crowd. That 
hair was placed there in infinite wisdom, but 
your fathers have been cutting it off from their 
chins in small crops for thirty to fifty years, thus 
impugning Nature's policy, wasting precious time, 
drawing a great deal of good blood, creating a 



FOOD AND PHYSICAL CULTURE. 59 

great deal of bad, and trying to erase from their 
faces the difference which was intended to be 
maintained between them and those of women. 
If you are a man, and have a beard, wear it. You 
know it was made to wear. It is enough to make 
a man with a decent complement of information 
and a common degree of sensibility (and a hand 
some beard) deny his kind, to see those smooth- 
faced men around the streets, and actually showing 
themselves in lemaie society ! Let us have one 
generation of beards. 



LETTER VII. 
Social Duties and Privileges. 

Say, shall my little bark attendant sail, 
Pursue the triumph and partake the gale ? 



Pope. 



The primal duties shine aloft like stars ; 
The charities that soothe, and heal, and bless, 
Are scatter'd at the feet of man like flowers. 

Woudswobth. 

IPEOPOSE in this letter to talk to you con- 
cerning your relations to society. Many, and 
I may say most young men fail for many years to get 
hold of the idea that they are members of society. 
They seem to suppose that the social machinery of 
the world is self-operating. They cast their first 
ballot with an emotion of pride, perhaps, but are 
sure to pay their first tax with a groan. They see 
political organizations in active existence ; the par- 
ish, and the church, and other important bodies 
that embrace in some form of society all men, are 
successfully operated ; and yet these young men 
have no part nor lot in the matter, They do no* 



61 

think of giving a clay's time to 
not t h i n k of giving anything 
have look 

be pre _. that 

are to be fnr^i them in the eh v. 

gratis, tha: _ Lye - is to be kept np for 
amusement — thai all social movements wl 
are to be organic h : ■■.;: th a 

and thai they exist 

critici._ slfishnc 

Some of you haven't known the £ : until now, and 
are not very much to blame. Ir is one of thr 
~ Krz :;lr :~: 

One of the first things a young man shook! 
a that he is acting his pact in !The 

earlier this is began fJi I think that th 3 

opponents of se aet societies in 

imate the benefit which it most be to e 

member to be obliged to contrib , the support 
of his particular organization, an :". ::■ assume 
sonal care and resj as a member. D 

sney to teach the lesson of 
which I speak * blessed thing. Half the 

ills of socif" xciginaie in the fao: thai ita burdens 
are unequally borne, a: . :". :.: the ' .v.:i es 01 in- 
dividuals to it are not a: 

ung man, begin early fcc 1 : : the so- 
cial institutions in which you have your life, 
you have intellect and accomplishments, give them 
to the elevation and delight of the circle in which 



62 TITCOIfB'S LETTERS. 

you move. If you have none of these, show an ac- 
commodating disposition by attending the sewing 
circle and holding yarn for the girls. Do your 
part, and be a man among men. Assume your 
portion of social responsibility, and see that you 
discharge it well. If you do not do this, then you 
are mean, and society has the right to despise you 
just as much as it chooses. You are, to use a 
word more emphatic than agreeable, a sneak, and 
have not a claim upon your neighbors for a single 
polite word. 

Young men have all noticed how easily some of 
their number get into society, and how others re- 
main out of a good social circle always. They are 
very apt to think that society has not discharged 
its duties to them. Now all social duties are re- 
ciprocal. Society, as it is called, is far more apt to 
pay its dues to the individual than the individual 
to society. Have you, young man, who are at- 
home whining over the fact that you cannot get 
into society, done anything to give you a claim to 
social recognition ? Are you able to make any 
return for social recognition and social privileges ? 
Do you know anything ? What kind of coin do 
you propose to pay, in the discharge of the obli- 
gation which comes upon you with social recogni- 
tion ? In other words, as a return for what you 
wish to have society do for you, what can you do 
for society ? This is a very important question — 
more important to you than to society. The ques- 
tion is, whether you will be a member of society 



SOCIAL DUTIES AND PRIVILEGES. 63 

by right, or by courtesy. If you have so mean a 
spirit as to be content to be a beneficiary of socie- 
ty — to receive favors and confer none — you have 
no business in the society to which you aspire. 
You are an exacting, conceited fellow. 

You ask me what society would have of you. 
Anything that you possess which has value in so- 
ciety. Society is not particular on this point. 
Can you act in a charade ? Can you dance ? Can 
you tell a story well ? Have you travelled, and 
have you a pleasant faculty of telling your adven- 
tures ? Are you educated, and able to impart val- 
uable ideas and general information ? Have you 
vivacity in conversation ? Can you sing ? Can 
you play whist, and are you willing to assist those 
to a pleasant evening who are not able to stand 
through a party ? Do you wear a good coat, and can 
you bring good dress into the ornamental depart- 
ment of society ? Are you up to anything in the way 
of private theatricals ? If you do not possess ft de- 
cent degree of sense, can you talk decent nonsense? 
Are you a good beau, and are you willing to make 
yourself useful in waiting on the ladies on all oc- 
casions ? Have you a good set of teeth, which you 
are willing to show whenever the wit of the com- 
pany gets off a good tiling ? Are you a true, 
straight-forward, manly fellow, with whose health- 
ful and uncorrupted nature it is good for society 
to come in contact ? In short, do you possess any- 
thing of any social value ? If you do, and are will- 
ing to impart it, society will yield itself to your touch. 



64 TITCOM&S LETTERS. 

If you have nothing, then society, as such, owes you 
nothing. Christian philanthropy may put its arm 
round you, as a lonely young man, about to spoil 
for want of something, but it is very sad and hu- 
miliating for a young man to be brought to that. 
There are people who devote themselves to nursing 
young men, and doing them good. If they invite 
you to tea, go by all means, and try your hand. 
If, in the course of the evening, you can prove to 
them that your society is desirable, you have won 
a point. Don't be patronized. 

Young men are very apt to get into a morbid 
state of mind, which disinclines them to social in- 
tercourse. They become devoted to business with 
such exclusiveness, that all social intercourse is irk- 
some. They go out to tea as if they were going 
to jail, and drag themselves to a party as to an ex- 
ecution. This disposition is thoroughly morbid, 
and to be overcome by going where you are invited 
always, and at any sacrifice of feeling. Don't 
shrink from contact with anything but bad morals. 
Men who affect your unhealthy minds with anti- 
pathy, will prove themselves very frequently to be 
your best friends and most delightful companions. 
Because a man seems uncongenial to you, who are 
squeamish and foolish, you have no right to shun 
hiim We become charitable by knowing men. 
¥e learn to love those whom we have despised by 
rubbing against them. Do you not remember 
some instance of meeting a man or woman at a 
watering-place whom you have never previously 



SOCIAL DUTIES AXD PRIVILEGES. 65 

known or cared to know — an individual, perhaps, 
against whom you have entertained the strongest 

prejudices — but to whom you became bound by 
a life-long friendship through the influence of three 
days' intercourse ? Yet if you had not thus met, 
you would have carried through life the idea that 
it would be impossible for you to give your fellow- 
ship to such an individual. 

God has introduced into human character infi- 
nite variety, and for you to say that you do not 
love and will not associate with a man because he 
is unlike you, is not only foolish but wrong. You 
are to remember that in the precise manner and 
degree in which a man differs from you, do you 
differ from Mm ; and that from his standpoint you 
are naturally as repulsive to him as he, from your 
standpoint, is to you. So, leave all this talk of 
congeniality to silly girls and transcendental dream- 
ers. Do your business in your own way, and con- 
cede to every man the privilege which you claim 
for yourself. The more you mix with men, the 
less you will be disposed to quarrel, and the more 
charitable and liberal you will become. The fact 
that you do not understand a man, is quite as likely 
to be your fault as his. There are a good many 
chances in favor of the conclusion that, if you 
fail to love an individual whose acquaintance you 
make, it is through your own ignorance and illib- 
erality. So, I say, meet every man honestly ; seek 
to know him ; and you will find that in those points 
in which he differs from you rests his power to in- 



66 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

struct yon, enlarge yon, and do yon good. Keep 
yonr heart open for everybody, and be snre that 
yon shall have yonr reward. Yon shall find a jew- 
el under the most uncouth exterior ; and associat- 
ed with comeliest manners and the oddest ways 
and the ugliest faces, you will find rare virtues, 
fragrant little humanities, and inspiring heroisms. 
Again: yon can have no influence unless you are 
social. A strictly exclusive man is as devoid of influ- 
ence as an ice-peak is of verdure. If you will take a 
peep at the Hudson River some bright morning, you 
will see, ploughing grandly along towards the great- 
metropolis, a magnificent steamer, the silver wave 
peeling off from her cutwater, and a million jewels 
sparkling in her wake, passing all inferior barks in 
sublime indifference, and sending yacht and skiff 
dancing from her heel. Eight behind her yon see 
a smaller ^teamer, the central motive power of a 
plateau of barges, loaded to their edges with the 
produce of thousands of well tilled acres. She has 
fastened herself to these barges by lines invisible 
to you. They may be homely things, but they 
contain the food of the nation. Her own speed 
may be retarded by this association, but the work 
she does for commerce is ten fold greater than that 
accomplished by the grand craft that shuns abra- 
sion as misfortune, and seeks to secure nothing but 
individual dignity and fast time. It is through 
social contact and absolute social value alone that 
you can accomplish any great social good. It is 
through the invisible lines which yon are able to 



SOCIAL DUTIES AXD PRIVILEGES. 67 

attach to the minds with which you are brought 
into association alone that you can tow society, 
with its deeply freighted interests, to the great ha- 
ven of your hope. 

The revenge which society takes upon the man 
who isolates himself, is as terrible as it is inevita- 
ble. The pride which sits alone, and will do noth- 
ing for society because society disgusts it, or be- 
cause its possessor does not at once have accorded 
to him his position, will have the privilege of pit- 
ting alone in his sublime disgust till it drop3 into 
the grave. The world sweeps by the isolated man, 
carelessly, remorselessly, contemptuously. He has 
no hold upon society, because he is not a part of it. 
The boat that refuses to pause in its passage, and 
throw a line to smaller craft, will bring no tow into 
port. So let me tell you, that if you have an hon- 
orable desire in your heart for influence, you must 
be a thoroughly social man. You cannot move 
men until you are one of them. They will not fol- 
low you until they have heard your voice, shaken 
your hand, and fully learned your principles and 
your sympathies. It makes no difference how much 
you know, or how much you are capable of doing. 
You may pile accomplishment upon acquisition 
mountain high ; but if you fail to be a social man, 
demonstrating to society that your lot is with tha 
rest, a little child with a song in its mouth, and a 
kiss for all, and a pair of innocent hands to lay up- 
on the knees, shall lead more hearts and change the 
direction of more lives than you. 



LETTER VIII. 

The Reasonableness and Desirableness of Religion. 

Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends 1 

Hath he not always treasures, always friends, 

The great good man ? Three treasures, love and light, 

And calm thoughts, regular as infant's breath ; 

And three firm friends, more sure than day and night — 

Himself, his maker, and the angel death ? 

COLEEEDGE, 

YOUNG men, I hate cant, and I do not know 
exactly how to say what I wish to say in this 
letter; but I desire to talk to you rationally upon the 
subject of religion. Now don't stop reading at the 
mention of this word, but read this letter through. 
The fact is, it is the most important letter I have 
undertaken to write to you. I know you, I think, 
very thoroughly. Life looks so good to you, and 
you are anticipating so much from it, that religion 
comes to you, and comes over you, like a shadow. 
You associate it with long faces, and prayer meet- 
ings, and psalm-singing, and dull sermons, and 
grave reproofs and stupidity. Your companions 
axe gay, and so are you. "Perhaps you make a jest 



TEE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION. 69 

of religion ; but deep down in your heart of hearts 

you know that you are not treating religion fairly. - 

You know perfectly well that there is something in 

a must have it. You know 

that the hour will come when you will specially 

it But you wish to put it off, and "enjoy 

life " first. This results very much from the kind 

of preaching you have always listened to. You 

have been taught that human life is a humbug, that 

■rich so greatly delight you are vain 

and sinful, that your great business in this world is to 

saved, and that you are only to be saved by 

learning to despise things that you love, and to 

:lrings which you despise. _Y'ou feel that this 

is unnatural and irrationaL ' I think it is, m 

Xow let me talk to you. 

Go with me, if you please, to the next station- 
house, and look off upon that line of railroad. It 
straight as an arrow. Out run the iron lines, 
ghttering in the sun, — out, as far as we can see, 
until, converging almost to a single thread, they 
pierce the sky. What were those rails laid in that 
for ? It is a road, is it '? Try your cart or 
your coach there. The axletrees are too narrow, 
and you go bumping along upon the sleepers. 

elb arrow. You cannot keep it on the rail, 
made for something. 
me to the locomotive shop. What is this 
re told it is a locomotive. What is a locomo- 
tive ? Why, it is a carriage moved by steam. But 
The wheels would cink into a 



70 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

common road to the axle. That locomotive can 
never run on a common road, and the man is a fool 
who built it. Strange that men will waste time 
and money in that way ! But stop a moment. 
"Why wouldn't those wheels just fit those rails ? 
"We measure them, and then we go to the track 
and measure its gauge. That solves the dif- 
ficulty. Those rails were intended for the locomo- 
tive, and the locomotive for the rails. They are 
good for nothing apart. The locomotive is not 
even safe anywhere else. If it should get off after 
it is once on, it would run into rocks and stumps, 
and bury itself in sands or swamps beyond re- 
covery. 

Young man, you are a locomotive. You are a 
thing that goes by a power planted inside of you. 
You are made to go. In fact, considered as a machine, 
you are very far superior to a locomotive. The 
maker of the locomotive is man ; your maker is 
man's maker. You are as different from a horse, 
or an ox, or a camel, as a locomotive is different 
from a wheelbarrow, a cart, or a coach. Now do 
you suppose that the being who made you— manu- 
factured your machine, and put into it the motive 
power — did not make a special road for you to run 
upon ? My idea of religion is that it is a railroad 
for a human locomotive, and that just so sure as it 
undertakes to run upon a road adapted only to ani- 
mal power, will it bury its "wheels in the sand, 
dash itself among rocks, and come to inevitable 
wreck. If you don't believe this, try the other 



TEE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION. 71 

thing. Here are forty roads : suppose you choose 
one of them, and see where you come out. Here 
is the dram-shop road. Try it. Follow it, and 
see how long it will be before you come to a stump 
and smash-up. Here is the road of sensual pleas- 
ure. You are just as sure to bury your wheels in 
the dirt as you try it. Your machine is too heavy 
for that track altogether. Here is the winding, 
uncertain path of frivolity. There are morasses on 
each side of it, and, with the headway that you are 
under, you will be sure, sooner or later, to pitch 
into one of them. Here is the road of philosophy, 
but it runs through a country from which the light 
of Heaven is shut out ; and while you may be able 
to keep your machine right side up, it will only be 
by feeling your way along in a clumsy, comfortless 
kind of style, and with no certainty of ever arriving 
at the heavenly station-house. Here is the road of 
scepticism. That is covered with fog, and a fence 
runs across it within ten rods. Don't you see that 
your machine was never intended to run on those 
roads ? Don't you know that it never was, and 
don't you know that the only track under heaven 
upon which it can run safely is the religious track? 
Don't you know that just as long as you keep your 
wheels on that track, wreck is impossible ? Don't 
you know that it is the only track on which wreck 
is not certain ? I know it, if you don't ; and I tell 
you that on that track which God has laid down 
expressly for your soul to run upon, your soul will 
find free play for all its wheels, and an unobstructed 



72 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

and happy progress. It is straight and narrow, but 
it is safe and solid, and furnishes the only direct 
route to the heavenly city. Now, if God made 
your soul, and made religion for it, you are a f ool- 
if you refuse to place yourself on the track. You 
cannot prosper anywhere else, and your machine 
will not run anywhere else. 

I suppose that a nice casuist would say that I had 
thus far talked only of morality — only of obedience 
to law. But I was only dealing with the subject in 
the rough, and trying to show you how rational 
a thing religion is, and to bring to your compre- 
hension your natural relation to it. I know that 
the rule of your life is selfishness. I know that 
you are sinful, polluted, wilful, and that you act 
from low motives. I know that the race to which 
you belong have all fallen from innocence, and that 
they have so thoroughly put out the light that God 
meant should light every man who comes into the 
world, that, supplementary to the natural moral 
system, He has, in great benevolence, devised a 
scheme of religion, embracing salvation. This is 
Christianity, and its purpose is to get you back up- 
on the track where the race first started. It is a 
divine contrivance, or plan, for accompHshing this 
purpose. 

Jesus Christ saw the whole mass of human ma- 
chinery off the track, and going to irremediable 
ruin just so truly as he did not interfere to pre- 
vent it. He came and told us all how to get back, 
through repentance, faith, reformation, the surren* 



TEE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION 73 

der of will, the abnegation of self, and the devotion 
of the heart in love to God and good will to men. 
He placed himself upon the track and ran over it, 
not only showing us how to get there ourselves, but 
showing us how to run when there. In other 
words, he exhibited to us a true human life. 
Then, when he had cleared away all the rubbish from 
the track, shown us how to get upon it again, how 
to run when we get there, how to avoid and repair 
accidents by the way, — when he had done all this, 
and set his agents at work in canying out Ins 
plans, he went back to Heaven, and now looks down 
to see how the work goes on. 

Young men, / believe this. I know it is true, 
and I know, and G-od knows that this plan which 
he has devised to save you and make it possible for 
you to lead a true human life, which shall ultimate 
in life's highest issues, is the only one which can 
save you. I know that you can never be happy 
until you have heartily and practically accepted this 
religion; and for you to go on year after year, 
carelessly, thoughtlessly, spoiling yourself, growing 
harder, meaner, more polluted, with no love to 
God and outgushing benevolence to men, is an in- 
sult to Jesus Christ and a brutal -wrong to that 
which he came to save. The fact is, that sin is the 
most unmanly thing in God's world. You never 
were made for sin and selfishness. You were made 
for love and obedience. If you think it is manly 
to reject religion, and the noble obligations it im- 
poses upon you, it only shows you how strong a 



74: TITC0MF8 LETTERS. 

hold tlie devil has upon you. / It shows how de- 
graded you are; how the beast that is in you dom- 
ineers over the soul that is in you. I 

Young man, your personal value depends entire- 
ly upon your possession of religion. You are 
worth to yourself what you are capable of enjoying; 
you are worth to society the happiness you are ca- 
pable of imparting. To yourself, without religion, 
you are worth very little. A man whose aims are 
low, whose motives are selfish, who has in his 
heart no adoration for the great God, and no love for 
his Christ, whose* will is not subordinate to the Su- 
preme will — gladly and gratefully — who has no 
faith, no tenable hope of a happy immortality, no 
strong-armed trust that with his soul it shall be 
well in all the future, cannot be worth very much 
to himself. Neither can such a nian be worth very 
much to society, because he has not that to bestow 
which society most needs for its prosperity and its 
happiness. A locomotive off the track is worth no- 
thing to its owner or the public so long as it is off 
the track. The conditions of its legitimate and 
highest value are not complied with. It cannot be 
operated satisfactorily to the owner, or usefully to 
the public, because it is not where it was intended 
to run by the man who made it. 

Just look at the real object of religion, and see 
how rational it is. It is the placing of your souls 
in harmony with God and his laws. God is the 
perfect, supreme soul, and your souls are the na- 
tural offspring of that soul. Your souls are made in 



THE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION. 75 

the image of his, and, like all created things, are 
subject to certain immutable laws. The transgres- 
sion of these laws damages your souls, warps them, 
stunts their growth, outrages them. Do you not 
see that you can only be manly and attain a manly 
growth, by preserving your true relations and like- 
ness to the father soul, and a strict obedience to the . 
laws of your being ? God has given you appetites, 
and he meant you should indulge them, and that 
they should be sources of happiness to you ; but 
always in a way which shall not interfere with your 
spiritual growth and development He gave you pas- 
sions, and they are just as sacred as any part of you, 
but they are to be under the strict control of your 
reason and your conscience. He gave you desires 
for earthly happiness. He planted in you the love 
of human praise, delight in society, the faculty to 
enjoy all his works. He gave you his works to en- 
joy, but you can only enjoy them truly when you 
regard them as blessings from the great Giver, to 
feed and not starve your higher natures. There is 
not a true joy in life which you are required to de- 
prive yourself of, in being faithful to him and his 
laws. Without obedience to law, your souls can- 
not be healthful, and it i3 only to a healthful soul 
that pleasure comes with its natural — its divine 
aroma. Is a nose stuffed with drugs capable of 
perceiving the delicate fragrance of the rose ? Is 
the soul that intensifies its pleasures as an object 
c q hie capable of a healthful appreciation of even 



76 TITCOMES LETTERS. 

purely sensual pleasures ? The idea of a man's en- 
joying life without religion is absurd. 

I have been thus particular upon this point, 
because I love you, and because I know that with- 
out it, or independent of it, all my precious talk 
has very little significance. I have reasoned the 
thing to you on its merits, and I urge it upon your 
immediate attention, as a matter of duty and pol- 
icy. The matter of duty you understand. I do 
not need to talk to you about that. Now about 
the policy. It will not be five years, probably, be- 
fore every one of you will be involved, head and 
ears, in business. Some of you are thus involved 
already. You grow hard as you grow older. You 
get habits of thought and life which incrust you. 
You become surrounded with associations which 
hold you, so that the longer you live without re- 
ligion t e worse it will Ice for you, and the less 
•^i^ cable will be your adoption of a religious life. 
If you expect to be a man, you must begin now. 
It is so easy, comparatively, to do it now ! 

With this paragraph I cease to direct my words 
particularly to you. What I have said to you, I 
have said heartily and conscientiously. I shall see 
you sometime. We are none of us to live very 
long, but if we all act the manly part we were sent 
here to act, and are true to God and ourselves, we 
shall be gathered into a great kingdom, whose 
throne will be occupied by the founder of our re- 
ligion. During some golden hour of that cloud- 
less day, sitting or straying upon some heavenly 



TEE REASONABLENESS OF RELIGION. 77 

hill, watching upon the far-stretching plains the 
tented hosts of God's redeemed, or marking the 
shadow of an angel's flight across the blight mirror 
of the river of life, I shall say something about 
these letters to you. I shall look you in the face 
as I say it, to see if you are moved to an emotion 
of gratitude or gratification ; and if you should 
happen to tell me that they made you better, that 
they led you to a higher development, that they 
directed you to a manly and a godly life, I should 
press your hand, and if I should keep from weep- 
ing it would be more than I can do now. 



LETTERS TO YOUXG YTOMEX 



LETTERS TO YOUNG WOMEN. 



LETTER I. 

Dress — Its Proprieties and Abuses. 

A creature not too bright or good 
For human nature's daily food ; 
For transient sorrows, simple wiles, 
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles. 
******** 

A perfect woman, nobly planned 
To warn, to comfort, and command. 

WOBDSWOETH. 

I have observed, among all nations, that the women ornament 
themselves more than the men. 

John Ledyaed. 

IACCOUXT a pure, beautiful, intelligent, and 
well-bred woman, the most attractive object 
of vision and contemplation in the world. As 
mother, sister, and wife, such a woman is an angel 
of grace and goodness, and makes a heaven of the 
home which is sanctified and glorified by her 



82 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

presence. As an element of society she invites 
into finest demonstrations all that is good in the 
heart, and shames into secrecy and silence all that 
is unbecoming and despicable. There may be 
more of greatness and of glory in the higher devel- 
opments of manhood, but, surely, in womanhood 
God most delights to show the beauty of the ho- 
liness and the sweetness of the love of which he is the 
infinite source. It is for this reason that a girl or 
a young woman is a very sacred thing to me. It is for 
this reason that a silly young woman or a vicious 
one makes me sigh or shudder. It is for this rea- 
son that I pray that I may write worthily to young 
women. 

In getting at a piece of work, it is often necessa- 
ry, as a preliminary, to clear away rubbish ; and I 
say at first that I do not write to masculine young 
women. ? I deem masculine women abnormal wo- 
men, and I therefore refer all those women who 
wish to vote, who delight in the public exhibition 
of themselves, who bemoan the fate which drapes 
them in petticoats, who quarrel with St. Paul and 
their lot, who own more rights than they possess; 
and fail to fulfil the duties of their sphere while 
seeking for its enlargement — I refer all these to 
the eight letters recently addressed to young men. 
They will find some practical remarks in those let- 
ters upon masculine development and a manly dis- 
charge of life's duties. My theory may be very un- 
sound, but it is my belief, that the first natural di- 
vision of the human race is marked by the line that 



DEESS AM) ITS 1 kOFFJETIES. 83 

distinguishes the sexes. I believe that a true wo- 
raan is just as different from a true man as a true 
man is different from a true woman. The nature 
and the constitution of the masculine are one, and 
the nature and constitution of the feminine are an- 
other. So of the glory attached to each ; so of . 
the functions ; so of the sphere. Therefore, if 
there be " strong-minded women" who read these 
letters, I bid them, with ah kindness, to turn to the 
other series for that which will most benefit them. 
I shall talk first of that thing which, worthily or 
most unworthily, engages the minds of all young 
women, viz, — deess. I speak of this first, because 
it is part of the rubbish which I wish to get out of 
the way before commencing more serious work ; 
and yet this is not altogether trivial I believe in 
dress. I believe that God delights in beautiful 
things, and as he has never made anything more 
beautiful than woman, I believe that that mode of 
dressing the form and face which best harmonizes 
with their beauty, is that which pleases him best. 
I believe the mode of female dress prevalent 
among the Shaker women is absolute desecration. 
To take anything which infinite ingenuity and 
power have made beautiful, and capable by the 
gracefulness of its form and the harmony of its 
parts of producing the purest pleasure to the observ- 
er, and clothe it with a meal bag and crown it with 
a sugar-scoop, is an irreverent trifling with sacred 
things which should be punished by mulct and im- 
prisonment. 



81 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

It is a shame to any woman who has the means to 
dress well, to dress meanly, and it is a particular 
shame for any woman to do this in the name of re- 
ligion. I have seen women who, believing the 
fashionable devotion to dress to be sinful, as it 
doubtless is, go to that extreme in plainness of at- 
tire which, if it prove anything touching the 
power that governs them, proves that it is a power 
which is at war with man's purest instincts, and 
most elevated tastes. I say it is a shame for a wo- 
man to dress unattractively who has it in her power 
to dress well. It is every woman's duty to make 
herself pleasant and attractive by such raiment 
and ornament as shall best accord with the style of 
beauty with which she is endowed. The beauty 
of woman's person was intended to be a source of 
pleasure — the fitting accompaniment of that which 
in humanity is the most nearly allied to the an- 
gelic. Surely, if God plants flowers upon a clod 
they may rest upon a woman's bosom, or glorify a 
woman's hair ! 

But dress is a sub ordinate thing, because beauty 
is not the essential thing. Beauty is very desira- 
ble ; it is a very great blessing ; it is a misfortune 
to possess an unattractive person; but there are 
multitudes of women with priceless excellences of 
heart and mind who are not beautiful. Beauty, 
so far as it is dependent upon form and color, is a 
material thing, and belongs to the grosser nature, 
Therefore, dress is a subject which should occupy 
comparatively few of the thoughts of a true wo- 



DRESS AXD ITS PROPRIETIES. 8b 

man, whether beautiful or not. To dress well, be 
comingly, even richly, if it can be afforded, is a 
woman's duty. To make the dress of the person 
the exponent of personal taste, is a woman's privi- 
lege. But to make dress the grand object of life ; 
to think of nothing and talk of nothing but that 
which pertains to the drapery and artificial orna- 
ment of the person, is but to transform the trick 
of a courtesan into amusement for a fool. There 
are multitudes of women with whom dress is 
the all-prevalent thought. They think of it, 
dream of it, live for it. It is enough to disgust 
one to hear them talk about it. It goes with them 
from the gaiety of the ball-room into the weeds of 
the house of death. They use it as a means for 
splitting grief into vulgar fractions, and are led out 
from great bereavements into the consolations of 
vanity, by the hands of numerators and denomin- 
ators. They flatter one another, envy one an- 
other, hate one another — all on the score of dress. 
They go upon the street to show their dresses. 
They enter the house of God to display their bon- 
nets. They actually prize themselves more highly 
for what they wear than for any charm of person or 
mind which they may possess ! 

One of the most vulgar and unbecoming things 
in the world is this devotion to dress, which, in 
many minds, grows into a form of insanitx , and 
leads to the wo rship of dry goods and dress-mak- 
ers. Now it will be impossible for me to give you 
special directions upon this subject of dress. Your 



88 TITCOlfB'S LETTERS. 

dress-maker and your books, and, better than all, 
your own taste and experience, will tell you what 
colors become your complexion, what style of make 
best accords with your form and style of movement. 
I shall only speak generally; and I say, first, dress 
modestly. It is all well enough for little girls to show 
their necks, but for a woman to make her appearance 
in the society of young men with such displays of 
person as are made in what is so mistakenly called 
" full dress," is a shame to her. I know what 
fashion allows in this matter, and fashion has many 
sins to answer for. JJThousands of girls dress in a 
manner that they would discard with horror and 
disgust, if they knew the trains of thought which 
are suggested by their presence.^ I know young 
men, and I know there is not one in one hundred 
who attends a " full dress party," and comes out as 
pure and worthy a man as he went in. v There is 
not one in one hundred who does not hold the se- 
cret of a base thought suggested by the style of 
dress which he sees around him. This may tell 
very badly for young men. Doubtless it does; but 
we are obliged to take things as we find them. 
The millennium has not dawned yet, and we have 
receded to a considerable distance from the era of 
human innocence. I tell you a fact ; and if you 
are modest young women, you will heed its sugges- 
tions. If you choose to become the objects of foul 
fancies among young men, whose respect you are 
desirous of securing, you know the way. 
Again, shun peculiarities of dress which attract 



DRESS AND ITS PROPRIETIES. 87 

the attention of the vulgar. Just now the reel pet- 
ticoat is the talk of the newspaper world. It is the 
inspiring theme of many a sportive pen, and when 
one of these is seen upon the street, it at tracts the 
attention of the prurient crowd. A modest woman 
will shun a notoriety like this, until it ceases to be 
such. I should deprecate the appearance upon the 
street of a sister of mine with such a garment, os- 
tentatiously displayed, as a calamity to her ; and 
yet I do not believe I am a squeamish man. 1 
know that a young woman can dress in such a way 
as to excite a chaste and worthy admiration among 
her own sex as well as mine, and my judgment tells 
me that that is the proper dress for her to wear. I 
feel that it is right and well for her to dress like 
this, and that it is not right and well for her to 
dress otherwise. 

Again, dress in such a manner that your attire 
will not occupy your thoughts after it is upon you. 
Let every garment be well fitted and well put on — 
ugly in no point, fussy in no point, nor made of 
such noticeable material that you necessarily cany 
with you the consciousness that people around you 
are examining it. Make it always subordinate to 
yourself — tributary to your charms, rather than 
constituent of them. Then the society in which 
you move will see you, and not your housings and 
trappings. ' ' Jane was dressed very becomingly, " or 
4 'how well Jane looked," are very much more com- 
plimentary comments than " that was a splendid 
dress that Jane wore;" and a tolerably acute mind 



88 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

may gather from these expressions the philosophy of 
the whole thing. 

There is, as a general thing, no excuse for attire 
which is not neat and orderly, at any time in the 
day. A thoroughly neat and orderly young woman % 
is presentable at any hour, whether she be in the j 
kitchen or parlor ; and I have seen specimens of / 
womanhood that were as attractive at the wash-tub, 
with their tidy hair and their nine-penny calico, as 
in their parlors at a later hour, robed in silk and 
busy at their embroidery. Materials may be hum- 
ble, but they may always be tastefully made and 
neatly kept. There are few habits that a young 
woman may acquire which, in the long run, will 
tend more to the preservation of her own self-re- 
spect than that of thorough tastefulness, appropri- 
ateness, and tidiness of dress, and certainly very 
few which will make her more agreeable to others. 

So, I say, dress well if you can afford it, always 
neatly, never obtrusively, and always with a modest 
regard to rational ideas of propriety. Scorn the 
idea of making dress in any way the great object 
of life. It is beneath you. A woman was made 
for something higher than a convenient figure for 
displaying drygoods and the possibilities of millin- 
ery and mantua-making. 



LETTER U. 

The Transition from Girlhood to Womanhood. 

O mirth and innocence 1 O milk and water ! 
Ye happy mixtures of more happy days I 

Byron. 

We figure to ourselves the thing we like, and then we build it 
up as chance will have it, on the rock or sand. 

Henry Taylor, 

EVEKY young woman who has arrived at twen- 
I ty years of age has passed through three dis- 
pensations — the chaotic, the transitional, and the 
crystalline. Ths chaotic usually terminates with 
the adoption of the long skirt. Then commences 
the transitional dispensation, involving the process 
of crystallization. This process may go on feebly 
for years, or it may proceed so rapidly that two 
years will complete it. In some women, it is never 
completed, in consequence of a lack of inherent 
, vital force, or a criminal disregard of the requisite 
conditions. This transitional dispensation, which 
is better characterized by calling it the silly dis- 
pensation, is so full of dangers that it calls for a 



90 TITGOMFS LETTERS. 

separate letter; and this I propose to write 
now. 

The sill j dispensation or stage of a young wo- 
man's life is marked by many curious symptoms, 
some of them indicative of disease. As the cutting 
of the natural teeth is usually accompanied by va- 
rious disorders, so the cutting of the spiritual teeth 
in a woman is very apt to exhibit its results in ab- 
normal manifestations. They sometimes eat slate- 
pencils and chalk, and some have been known to 
take kindly to broken bits of plastering. Others 
take a literary turn, and, not content with any 
number of epistles to female acquaintance, send in 
contributions to the press, which the friendly and 
appreciative editor kindly and carefully returns, or 
as kindly and carefully loses, or fails to receive. 
Others still take to shopping and dawdling with 
clerks who have dawning beards, red cheeks, and 
frock coats with outside pockets, from which pro- 
trude white handkerchief-tips. Still others yoke 
themselves in pairs, drawn together by sympathetic 
attraction, and by community of mental exercise 
on the subject of beaux. You shall see them walk- 
ing through the streets, locked arm in arm, plung- 
ing in the most charming confidences, or if you 
happen to sleep in the house with them, you shall 
hear them talking in their chamber until, at mid- 
night, the monotonous hum of their voices has 
soothed you into sleep ; and the same voices, with 
the' same unbroken hum, shall greet your ears in 
the morning. Others take to solitude and long 



FROM GIRLHOOD TO WOMANHOOD. 91 

curls. They walk with their eves clown, murmur- 
ing to themselves, with the impression that every- 
body is looking at them. 

If a young woman can be safely carried through 
this dispensation, the great step of life will have 
been gained. This is the era of hasty marriages, 
deathless attachments which last until they are su- 
perseded, and deliberately formed determinations 
to live a maiden life, which endure until the recep- 
■^on of an offer of marriage. If, during this period, 
a young woman be at home, engaged more or 
less in the duties of the household, or, if she be 
engaged in study, with the healthful restraints and 
stimulus of general society about her, it is very 
well for her. But if she be among her mates con- 
stantly, with nothing to do, or if she be shut up in a 
boarding-school conducted on the high pressure 
principle, where imagination is stimulated by re- 
straint, and disobedience to law is provoked by its 
unreasonableness, it is indeed very bad for her. 

It is probable that the theatre is a school of vice 
rather than of virtue, that the ball-room is a pro- 
moter of dissipation, and that indiscriminate socie- 
ty has its temptations and its dangers ; but a fe- 
male boarding-school, shut off from general society 
by law, its members lacking free exercise in the 
open air, denied the privilege of daily amusements, 
and presided over by teachers who fail to under- 
stand the nature of the precious material they have 
in charge, is as much worse for mind and morals 
than all these combined, as can well be imagined. 



92 TITGOMES LETTERS, 

I know female boarding-schools that are properly 
conducted, whose teachers know what a girl is, and 
what she needs, a^ad who contrive to lead her 
through this transitional passage of her life into a 
healthful and rational womanhood ^and I know 
others whose very atmosphere is that of fever. I 
know boarding-schools where beaux are the ever- 
lasting topic of conversation, and where an un- 
healthy imagination is so stimulated by irrational 
restraints and mutual fellow-feeding, that the foun- 
dation of nearly every character is necessarily laid 
in rottenness. . 

If any young woman in a boarding-school or out 
of it, should find herself a subject of any of the dis- 
eases which I have pointed out, she should seek a 
remedy at once. If she finds herself moved to go 
shopping for the simple purpose of talking with the 
clerks, let her remember that she is not only doing 
an immodest and unbecoming thing, but that she 
is manifesting the symptom of that which is a dan- 
gerous mental disease. To begin with, she is do- 
ing a very silly thing. Again, she is doing that 
which compromises her in the eyes of all sensible 
young men. If she finds herself possessed with 
unaccountable proclivities to a mineral diet, or a 
foggy out-reaching for something or other that 
manifests itself in profound confidences with one 
similarly afflicted, or any one of a hundred absorb- 
ing sentimentalisms, let her remember that she is 
mentally and morally sick, and that, for her own 
comfort and peace, she should seek at once for 



FROM GIRLHOOD TO W03TAXM00D. 03 

a remedy. Her own safety is in seeking direct 
contact with a healthier and more advanced life, 
and by seeming healthful occupation for all her 
powers, intellectual and physical. Dreams, imag- 
inations, silly talk and twaddle about young men, 
yearnings after sympathetic hearts, the dandling of 
precious little thoughts about beaux on the knees 
of fancy, and all that sort of nonsense should be 
discarded — thrust out of the sacred precincts of the 
mind — as if they were so many foul reptiles. Get 
out of this feverish and unhealthy frame just as 
soon as possible, and walk forth into a more nat- 
ural, dignified, and womanly life. 

A young woman at this age should remember 
that her special business is to fit herself for the 
duties of life. I would not deny to her the society 
of young men, when she has time for it, and prop- 
er opportunity, but she should remember that she 
has nothing to do with beaux, nothing to do with 
thoughts and calculations for marriage, nothing to 
do but ta become, in the noblest way, a woman. 
She should remember that she is too young to know 
her own mind, and that, as a general thing, it is 
not worth knowing. | Girlish attachments and girl- 
ish ideas of men are the silhest things in all the 
world. I If you do not believe it. ask your mothers. 
Z\ inety-nine times in a hundred they will tell you 
that they did not many the boy they fancied, be- 
fore they had a right to fancy anybody. If you 
dream of matrimony for amusement, and for the 
sake of killing time, I have this to say, that, con- 



94 TITC03fl?S LETTERS. 

sidering the kind of young man yon fancy, yon 
can do quite as well by hanging a hat upon a 
hitching post, and worshipping ^ through your 
chamber window. Besides, it is during this period 
of unsettled notions and readily shifting attach- 
ments that a habit of flirting and a love of it are 
generated. 
' I suppose that coquetry, in its legitimate form, 
is among a woman's charms, and that there is a 
legitimate sphere for its employment, for, except 
in rare natures, it is a natural thing with your sex. 
Nature has ordained that men shall prize most that 
which shall cost an effort, and while it has designed 
that you shall at some time give your heart and 
hand to a worthy man, it has also provided a way 
for making the prize he seeks an apparently diffi- 
cult one to win. It is a simple and beautiful pro- 
vision for enhancing your value in his eyes, so as 
to make a difficult thing of that which you know 
to be unspeakably easy. If you hold yourselves 
cheaply, and meet all advances with open willing- 
ness and gladness, the natural result will be that 
your lover will tire of you. I introduce this sub- 
ject here, not because I wish to, but because I am 
compelled to, in order to explain what I have to 
say upon the habit and love of flirting. 

To become a flirt is to metamorphose into a dis- 
gusting passion that which by natural constitution 
is a harmless and useful instinct. This instinct of 
coquetry, which makes a woman a thing to be won, 
and which I suppose all women are conscious of 



FROM GIELEOOD TO WOMANHOOD. 93 

possessing in some degree, is not a thing to be 
cultivated or developed, at all. It should be left 
to itself, unstimulated and unperverted, and if, in 
the formative stage of your womanhood, by initiat- 
ing shallow attachments and heartlessly breaking 
them, or seeking to make impressions for the sake 
of securing attentions which are repaid by insult 
and negligence, you do violence to your nature, 
you make of yourself a woman whom your own sex 
despise, and whom all sensible men who do not 
mean to cheat you with insincerities as mean as 
yours, are afraid of. They will not love, and they 
will not trust you. This instinct, then, is not a 
thing to be harmlessly played with ; and I know of 
few more unhappy and disgusting sights than a 
girl bringing into her womanhood this passion — 
harmful alike to herself and others. 

The natural and inevitable influence of the de- 
votion of your thoughts — spoken, written, or un- 
expressed — to beaux and the subject of marriage, 
while your mind is undergoing a process of crystal- 
lization, is to deter that process, to vitiate it, and 
to make you unworthy in many ways. It is all-im- 
portant to you at this time to have the counsel of a 
good, sensible woman, who shall be your senior by 
at least ten years. She should be a married wo- 
man, and, by all means, your mother, unless there 
be some natural bar to entire communication be- 
tween you. Do nothing, and give a cherished en- 
tertainment to no thoughts which you are unwil- 
ling to reveal to this woman. If your companions 



96 TITGOMBS LETTERS. 

persist in keeping subjects of this character before 
your mind, leave them — cut them. 

It is necessary that, while your education is act- 
ively in progress, your perceptions be kept health- 
ful, and your sentiments unperverted by thought- 
less tampering with a subject which you will 
sometime come to know is one of the most serious 
moment. It spoils a girl to get the idea into her 
head, that marriage is the chief end of woman, 
that education is but a preparation for matrimony, 
and that accomplishments are nothing but contri- 
vances for catching a husband. And now, young 
woman, whose eye traces these lines, I ask of you 
to decide how much of this letter belongs to you. 
How are you living ? What is the principal sub- 
ject of your thoughts ? I know that I reveal some 
young women to themselves; and I only fear that 
they will find themselves so bound to their seduc- 
tive thoughts and fancies — so dissipated and ener- 
vated by them — that they have not moral strength 
enough left to break away from them. 



LETTER in. 

Acquisitions and Accomplishments. 

Show us how divine a thing 
A woman may be made. 

WORDSWORTH. 

IT is a matter of special importance to you that 
you comprehend and thoroughly appreciate the 
difference between accomplishments and scientific 
and literary acquisitions. A woman may have 
many acquisitions, and no accomplishments, in the 
usual meaning of that word, and vice versa. As 
the life of a woman goes in this country, these ac- 
quisitions perform their most important office in 
the process by which they are achieved ; — that is, 
the great work which they do for a woman is that 
of training and disciplining her mind. Many a 
woman thoroughly learned Algebra at school, with 
decided advantage to herself, who never makes a 
practical use of Algebra. She may have been a 
good Latin or Greek scholar, but, having no im- 
portant use for her acquisition in practical life, she 



98 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

suffers her knowledge of those languages to fade 
out. In short there are very few of her text-books 
which, in rive years after leaving school, she would 
not be obliged to review with the severest study 
before she could re-acquire the credit she won in 
her last examination. A woman may have a pet 
acquisition which she transforms, by her manner of 
treatment, into an accomplishment. Botany is thus 
transformed, not unfrequently, into a very graceful 
thing. 

An accomplishment differs from a science, or a 
system of truth of any kind, acquired during the 
process of education, in that it needs to be perma- 
nent, and so far as possible perfect, to be of any use 
to the individual or to society. Music, drawing, con- 
versation, composition, the French language, danc- 
ing — all these in America are regarded as accom- 
plishments ; yet of fifty women who acquire either 
of them, or all of them, not more than two retain 
them. 

Miss Georgiana Aurelia Atkins Green w T as an in- 
timate friend of mine, or, rather, perhaps I should 
say, her mother's brother boarded my horse, and I 
bought my meat of her father. It was the deter- 
mination of Mrs. Green that her daughter should 
be a finished lady. During the finishing process I 
I saw but little of her. It occupied three years, and 
I was performed at a fashionable boarding-school, 
between the ages of fifteen and eighteen, regard- 
less of expense. "When she was finished off, she 
was brought home in triumph, and exhibited on 



A CQ UISITIONS—A CCOMPLISHMENTS. 99 

various occasions to crowds of admiring friends. I 
went one evening to see her. She was really very 
pretty, and took up her role with spirit, and acted it 
admirably. I saw a portfolio lying upon her piano, 
and knowing that I was expected to seize upon 
it at once, I did so, against Miss Green's protesta- 
tion, which she was expected to make, of course. I 
found in it various pencil drawings, a crayon head 
of the infant Samuel, and a terrible shipwreck in 
India ink. The sketches were not without merit. 
These were all looked over, and praised, of course. 
Then came the music. This was some years ago, 
and the most that I remember is that she played 
Dolce Concento with the variations, and the Bat- 
tle of Prague, the latter of which the mother ex- 
plained to me during its progress. The pieces 
were cleverly executed, and then I undertook to 
talk to the young woman. I gathered from her 
conversation that Mrs. Martinet, the principal of 
the school where she had been finished, was a lady 
of " so much style !" that Miss Kittleton of New 
York was the dearest girl in the school, and that 
she (Georgiana) and the said Kittleton were such 
friends that they always dressed alike ; and that 
Miss Kittleton 's brother Fred was a magnificent 
fellow. The last was said with a blush, from the 
embarrassments of which she escaped gracefully by 
stating that the old Kittleton was a banker, and 
rolled in money. 

It was easy to see that the parents of this dear 
girl admired her profoundly. I pitied her and 



100 T1TCOMBS LETTERS. 

thein, and determined, as a matter of duty, that I 
would show her just how much her accomplish- 
ments were worth. I accordingly asked of my wife 
the favor to invite the whole family to tea, in a 
quiet way. They all came, on the appointed even- 
ing, and after the tea was over, I expressed my de- 
light that there was one young lady in our neighbor- 
hood who could do something to elevate the tone 
of our society. I then drew out, in a careless way, 
a letter I had just received from a Frenchman, and 
asked of Miss Georgiana the favor to read it to me. 
She took the letter, blushed, went half through 
the first line correctly, then broke down on a sim- 
ple word, and confessed that she could not read it. 
It was a little cruel; but I wished to do her good, 
and proceeded with my experiment. I took up a 
piece of music, and asked her if she had seen it. 
She had not. I told her there was a pleasure in 
store for both of us. I had heard the song once, 
and I would try to sing it if she would play the ac- ' 
companiment. She declared she could not do it 
without practice, but I told her she was too mod- 
est by half. So I dragged her, protesting, to the 
piano. She knew she should break down. I knew 
she would, and she did. Well, I would not let her 
rise, for as Mr. and Mrs, Green were fond of the 
old-fashioned church music, and had been singers 
in their day, and in their way, I selected an old 
tune, and called them to the piano to assist. Mrs. 
Green gave us the key, and we started off in fine 
style. It was a race to see which would come out 



A CQ UISIT10NS—A CCOMPLIHUMENT& 101 

ahead. Georgiana won, by skipping most of the 
notes. She rose from the piano with her cheeks as 
red as a beet. 

" By the way, "said I, " Georgiana, your teacher 
of drawing must have been an excellent one." I 
did not tell her that I had seen evidence of this in 
her own efforts in art, but I touched the? right 
spring, and the lady gave me the teacher's creden- 
tials, and told me what such and such people had said 
of her. " Well," said I, " I am glad if there is one 
young woman who has learned drawing properly. 
Now you have nothing to do but to practice your 
delightful art, and you must do something for the 
benefit of your friends. I promised a sketch of 
my house to a particular friend, at a distance, and 
you shall come up to-morrow and make one. 
I remember that beautiful cottage among your 
sketches ; and I should prize a sketch of my own, 
even half as well done, very highly." The poor 
girl was blushing again, and from the troubled 
countenances of her parents, I saw that they had 
begun indistinctly to comprehend the shallowness 
— the absolute worthlessness — of the accomplish 
ments that had cost them so much. Georgiana ac- 
knowledged that she had never sketched from na- 
ture — that her teacher had never required it of her, 
and that she had no confidence that she could 
sketch so simple an object as my house. The 
Greens took an early leave, and I regret to say a 
cool one. They were mortified, and there was not 



102 T1TCOMFS LETTERS. 

good sense enough in the girl to make an improve- 
ment of the hints I had given her. 

The Green family resided upon a street that I 
always took on my way to the post-office, and there 
was rarely a pleasant evening that did not show 
their parlor alight, and company within it. I heard 
the same old variations of Dolce Conoento evening 
after evening. The Battle of Prague was fough* 
over and over again. The portfolio of drawings 
(such of them as had not been expensively framed) 
was exhibited, I doubt not, to admiring friends 
until they were soiled with thumbing. At last, 
Georgiana was engaged, and then she was married 
— married to a very good fellow, too. He loved 
music, loved painting, and loved his wife. Two 
years passed away ; and I determined to ascertain 
how the pair got along. She was the mother of a 
fine boy, whom I knew she would be glad to have 
me see. I called, was treated cordially, and saw 
the identical old portfolio, on the identical old 
piano. I asked the favor of a tune. The husband 
with a sigh informed me that Georgiana had 
dropped her music. I looked about the walls, and 
saw the crayon Samuel, and the awful shipwreck 
in India ink. Alas ! the echoes of the Battle of 
Prague that came back over the field of memory, 
and these fading mementoes around me, were all 
that remained of the accomplishments of the late 
Miss Georgiana Aurelia Atkins Green. 

Now, young woman, I think you will not need 
any assurance from me that I have drawn a genuine 



A CQ UISITIC XS—A CC0MPL1SHMENTS. 103 

portrait, for wliicli any number of your acquaint- 
ances may have played the original. "What do you 
think of accomplishments like these ? How much 
do they amount to ? My opinion of them is that 
they are the shabbiest of all things that can be as 
sociated with a woman's life and history. I have 
told you this story in order to show you the impor 
tance of incorporating your accomplishments with 
your very life. It is comparatively an easy task to 
leam a few tunes by rote ; to get up, with the as- 
sistance of a teacher, a few drawings ; to go 
through with a few French exercises ; but it is not 
so easy to learn the science of music, and go 
through the manual practice necessary to make the 
science available under all circumstances. It is not 
easy to sketch with facility from nature. It is not 
easy to comprehend the genius of the French lan- 
guage, and so to familiarize yourself with it that it 
shall ever remain an open language to you, and 
give you a key to a new literature. A true accom- 
plishment is won only by hard work; but when it 
is won, it is a part of you, which nothing but your 
own neglect can take away from you. 

And now let me tell you a secret. Multitudes of j 
married men are led to seek the society of other 
women, or go out among their own fellows, and \ 
often into bad habits, because they have drunk 
every sweet of lif e which their wives can give them. 
They have heard all their tunes, seen all their ef- 
forts at art, sounded their minds, and measured 
every charm, and they see that henceforth there 



104 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

is nothing in the society of their wives but insipid- 
ity. They married women of accomplishments, 
but they see never a new development — no im- 
provement. Their wives can do absolutely noth- 
ing. The shell is broken; the egg is eaten. 

The first accomplishment that I would urge 
upon you, is that of using the English language 
with correctness, elegance, and facility. There are 
comparatively few young women who can write a 
good note. I kn o w of hardly one who can punctuate 
her sentences proj)erly. I beg of you never to write 
affection with a single /, or friendship without an 
i in the first syllable. Such slips destroy the words, 
and the sentiment they represent. If you accom- 
plish yourselves in nothing else, learn thoroughly 
how to use your mother tongue. I remember 
one young woman with whom, when in youth, I 
had the misfortune to correspond. In the barren- 
ness of subjects upon which to engage her pen, she 
once inquired by note whether I ever saw such ' ' a 
spell of wether," as we had been having. I frank- 
ly informed her that I never did, and that I hoped 
she would never indulge in such another, for it 
made mo cool. She took the hint, and broke off 
the correspondence. 

There are many who can write tolerably well, 
but who cannot talk. Conversation I am inclined 
to rank among the greatest accomplishments and 
the greatest arts. Natural aptness has much to do 
with this, but no woman can talk well who has not 
a good stock of definite information. I may add 



ACQ UISITIONS— ACCOMPLISHMENTS. I )5 

to this, that no woman talks well and satisfactory 
who reads for the simple purpose of talking. 
There must exist a genuine interest in the affairs 
which most concern all men and women. The 
book, magazine, and newspaper literature of the 
time, questions of public moment, all matters and 
movements relating to art, affairs of local interest — 
all these a woman may know something of, and 
know something definitely. Of all these she can 
talk if she will try, because there is something in 
all which excites feeling of some kind, and shapes 
itself into opinion. 

But whatever accomplishment a young woman 
attempts to acquire, let her by all means acquire it 
thoroughly and keep it bright. Accomplishments 
all occupy the field of the arts. They are things 
which have no significance or value save in the 
ability of doing. They become, or should become, 
the exponents of a woman's highest personality. 
They are her most graceful forms of self-expres- 
sion, and into them she can pour the stream of her 
thoughts and fancies, and through them utter the 
highest language of her nature and her culture. 
Accomplishments make a woman valuable to her- 
self. They greatly increase her pleasure, both di- 
rectly in the practice, and indirectly through the 
pleasures which she gives to society. A truly ac- f 
complished woman — one whose thoughts havej 
come naturally to flow out in artistic forms, wheth- 
er through the instrumentality of her tongue, her 
pen, her pencil, or her piano, is a treasure to her- 



106 TITCOllB'S LETTERS. 

self and to society. Such a woman as this would || 
I have you to be. J There may be something to in- if 
t erf ere with yoiirbeing all this ; but this you can 
do : you can acquire thoroughly every accomplish- 
ment for which you have a natural aptitude, or you 
can let it alone. Do not be content with a smat- 
tering of anything. Do not be content to play 
parrot to your teachers, until your lesson is learned, 
and then think you are accomplished. Do not be 
content with mediocrity in any accomplishment 
you undertake. Do not be content to be a Miss 
Georgiana Aurelia Atkins Green. 



LETTER IV. 

Unreasonable and Injurious Restraints. 

Let me not to the marriage of true minds 
Admit impediments. 

Shasspeee. 

I SUPPOSE that most men have observed the 
following facts from which I propose to draw a 
lesson : — First, that young married women have 
a peculiar charm for unmarried young men, and 
that a young man's first love is almost uniformly 
devoted to a woman older than hhnself . 

A marriageable young woman occupies, or is 
made to occupy, a position of peculiar hardship. 
Our theory is that a woman should never make an 
advance towards the man she loves and would mar- 
ry. Such a step is deemed inconsistent with mai- 
den modesty. I do not quarrel with this, but the 
effect has been to make young women, who pos- 
sess sensitive natures, hypocrites. It ought not to 
do it, but it does. Eveiy modest young woman, 
possessing a good degree of sagacity, plays a part, 



108 TITCOMFS LETTERS. 

almost always, when in the society of young men. 
The fear is that by some word, or look, or act, she 
shall express such a degree of interest in a young 
man as shall lead him to believe that she is after 
him. Young women study the effect of their lan- 
guage, they often shun civilities, they put on their 
artificial and constrained style of behavior, for 
fear that some complacent fool will misconstrue 
them, or some gentleman whom they wish to please 
will deem them too forward, and so become dis- 
gusted. The result is, that a man rarely finds out 
either the best or the worst points of his wife's 
character before he marries her. Social inter- 
course is carried on under a kind of protest, which 
places every young woman in a position absolutely 
false before the eyes of young men. Many a wo- 
man owes a life of celibacy and disappointment to 
the fact that she never felt at liberty to act out her- 
self. 

With these statements, it is very easy to under- 
stand the attractions which a young married wo- 
man has for a bachelor, and to explain the phe- 
nomenon of a young man falhng in love with a 
woman older than himself. In the first instance, 
a married woman becomes agreeable because she 
becomes perfectly natural and unconstrained, her 
circumstances allowing all the more grateful forms 
of politeness — the cordial greeting, the complimen- 
tary attentions, and the free conversation — without 
the danger of being misconstrued. In the latter 
instance, the woman throws off her constraint in 



INJUBIO US RES TBAIXTS. 109 

the same manner, because .she is in the society of 
one whom she regards as, in reality, a boy. She 
finds, very much to her surprise, that she has won 
the boy's heart ; but it was the most natural thing 
in the world. He had never had a sight of a woman's 
nature before. The girls with whom he had asso- 
ciated had always worn a mask. The real hearts 
behind it he had thus far failed to apprehend. 
There is a very general impression among the 
young men whose affections are not engaged, that 
the best women are married, and that those who 
are left do not amount to much. They will think 
differently some time or other. 

Now my idea is that this universal mask- wearing 
system should be broken up. It does injustice to 
all parties. If there is, in society, any poor crea- 
ture in the form of a man whose vanity is so open 
to flattery that a young woman cannot treat him 
with natural, cordial politeness, without his think- 
ing that she would like to many him, and is trying 
to ensnare him, let him think so, and trust to time 
and circumstances for justice. Such men are of 
too little account in the world to pay for carrying 
a deceitful face, and despoiling the intercourse of 
the young of its sweetest charms. If you like the 
society of young men, take no pains to conceal it, 
but treat them with frank cordiality. Xo true gen- 
tleman among them will misconstrue you. It is 
not necessary for you to tell them that you calcu- 
late to live a maiden life. They know you he. It 
will not do to indicate to any man of sense thai, you 



110 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

do not like the attentions and society of gentlemen, 
for he knows better. He knows, at least, that you 
ought to like them, and that if you do not, there 
is something wrong about you. Don't practice de- 
ception of any kind. A man who is frank and 
open-hearted with you, deserves to be met with 
a frank and open heart by you; and in ninety- 
nine cases in every hundred, men will be honorable 
and manly with you,- if you will lay aside suspi- 
cion, and trust them. If a man prove himself un- 
worthy of your confidence, you have your remedy. 
Cut him, or tell him what you think of him, and 
bring him upon his knees. 

I have given my advice without many qualifica- 
tions, but do not misconstrue me. I write upon 
the supposition that you have common sense, and 
know what I mean. Some people, I suppose, 
would present you with a formula by which to 
conduct all your intercourse with young men. I 
know a large number of fathers and mothers who 
will think that, upon this subject, I ought to guard 
my language, and be more particular; but I know 
very well that if you have not sense and prudence 
enough to take this general counsel, and use it 
judiciously, no qualifications that I could make 
would be of any service to you. 
4 / trust you. I believe you are virtuous young 
women, with pure hearts and true intentions J» and 
I know there is no danger to you until you cease to 
be such. You have an instinct — G-od's word in 
your own souls — that tells you when a man takes the 



INJURIOUS RESTRAIN! Ill 

first wrong step towards you; and if yon do not re- 
pel that step in suck a manner that it will never be 
repeated, do yon suppose that anything I could say- 
to you would do you any good ? I say this : 
perfect frankness and cordiality in the treatment of 
young men are entirely consistent with the - 
of any true woman from insult or offensive famil- 
iarity?] Is your father afraid to trust you out of 
his sight ? I am not. If I were. I would be 
ashamed to confess it, particularly if you were a 
daughter of mine. \l believe in you, and I believe, 
moreover, that if this contemptible idea that men 
are your natural enemies, and that you must cheat 
them and look out for them, could be got out of the 
:.nd a free and unconstrained social intercourse 
established between you and them, they would 
be much better, and you altogether safer fpi 

There is another subject, more or less intim 
associated with this, which may as well be treated 
here. It is very natural for young women to get 
in the habit of treating only those young men po- 
litely whom they happen, for various reasons, to 
fancy. They " don't care " what the majority of 
young men think of them, provided they retain the 
good will of their particular pets. They are whim- 
sical, and take on special and strong likes or dis- 
likes for the young men whom they meet. One is 
"perfectly hateful," and another is "perfectly 
splendid," and so they proceed to make fools of 
themselves over both parties. Now there is noth- 
ing upon which a young man is so sensitive as this 



112 TITCOM&S LETTJSB8. 

matter of being treated with polite consideration 
by the young women of his acquaintance-; and I 
know of nothing which will tend more certainly to 
make a young man hateful than to treat him as if 
he were so. There is a multitude of young m^ti 
whose self-respect is nurtured, whose ambition is 
quickened, and whose hearts are warmed with a 
genial fire, by those considerate recognitions on the 
part of their female acquaintances which assure 
them that they have a position in the esteem of 
those with whom they associate the sweetest hopes 
and happiness of life. To be cut for no good 
cause is to receive a wound which is not easily 
healed. 

The duty, therefore, which I would inculcate is 
that of systematic politeness. If you know a 
young man, bow to him when you meet him. Ho 
will not bow to you first, for he waits for your recog- 
nition. He does not know whether you esteem him 
of sufficient value to be recognized. If you pass 
him without recognition, you say to him, in a lan- 
guage which he feels with a keenness which you 
cannot measure, that you consider him beneath 
your notice. You plant in his heart immediately a 
prejudice against yourself. You disturb him. You 
hurt him, and this, too, let me admit, very fre- 
quently without design. You are sensitive your- 
self, and afraid he has forgotten you. You think, 
perhaps, that he would not like to notice you, and 
would not like to have you notice him. There is 
a good deal of this kind of thing, doubtless, but it 



INJUBIOUS RESTBAIXTS. 113 

is all wrong. There is no man who will not return 
your bow, and feel the better for your smile: and 
if the young man receiving the attention is poor, 
and has his position in the world to win, and feels 
that he has not as many attractions, personal or 
circumstantial, as others, you have made his heart 
light, and awakened towards yourself a feeling of 
cordial good will, akin in many instances to grati- 
tude. 

A young woman who is afraid of compromising 
her position by recognizing men out of her set, or 
out of a certain line of genteel occupations, shows 
by how frail a tenure she holds her own respecta- 
bility. I could name to you women who have not 
only a recognized but a commanding position in the 
best society, who are as uniformly and systemati- 
cally polite to the clerk who sells them silks, as to 
the pets of their circle' who have a bow and a smile 
for all with whom they have ever been thrown into 
personal relations, and who, by this very politeness, 
more than by any other self-expression, vindicate 
their place among those whom society calls ladies. 
There is a kind word for them in every young 
man's mouth; and no young man would ever think 
of presuming upon such politenesses for the indul- 
gence of an offensive familiarity. Such women 
have a sacredness in his eyes that no other women 
possess, and he would offend them in no way, for 
the world. 

The advice I have given you in these matters is 
partly for the benefit *of your sex, and partly for 



114 TITCOMFS LETTERS. 

mine. I believe that there should be a far inoro 
rational mode of intercourse between young men 
and young women than at present exists. I believe 
that every legitimate attraction that your society 
has for young men should be free and -uncon 
strained. I believe that there is no good reason why 
a young married woman should be more attractive 
to a bachelor than yourselves, and that in the de- 
gree in which they are more attractive, do you 
wrong yourselves and the young men of your ac- 
quaintance. I believe that it is well for you, and 
well for young men, that they should be attracted 
to you by a frank behavior on your part, which will 
place them at their ease, and exercise upon them 
all that good influence which a pure, strong, out- 
spoken female nature is so well calculated to ^ex- 
ert. 

Young men and young women, to use a cant 
phrase of the day, are "in the same boat." But 
a few years will pass away before they will be the 
bosom companions of each other, and the fathers 
and mothers of the land. It matters everything to 
them that they understand each other; and to this 
end, in my judgment, an intercourse between 
them should be established upon a very different 
basis from that which is now maintained by so- 
ciety. It should be more simple, more arnple, 
more natural, more trustful, and more heartily 
considerate. There is nothing in the • history of 
the race to prove that anything has ever been pre- 
served or won to virtue by a system of essential 



INJURIOUS RESTRAINTS. 115 

falsehood, or a policy of arbitrary constraint. 
Many a giri feels this, and will feel it to her dying 
To tie a young woman up to the meanly 
cautions conventionalisms of the day, is to prepare 
her as a help] :rifice to the first designing 

.villain vrho insinuates himself into her confidence. 
Many a woman groans to-day in bondage to a 
drunkard, a libertine, or a dolt, who only needed 
to have been allowed to know men better to have 
secured a proper companion. 

I say, then, to you, young women, reform this 
thing altogether. It is in your hands. I give you 
the idea: I leave you to cany it into practice. 
You do not need that I should tell you how to do 
it. If yon are not vicious, there is nothing 
for you, in your mind and heart, to conceal. 
Be simply yourselves, taking all possible care 
to make yourselves what you should be. Leam 
to think kindly of all young men. save those who 
you have reason to believe possess black hearts 
and foul intentions — those who are enemies of 
your sex and social purity.*^ Treat every young 
man well, both for his sake and your own. l^You 
shah thus be the light of many eyes, and your kind 
heart, thorough good manners, and transparent na- 
ture, cannot fail to attract to you those whose true no- 
bility is the most strongly touched by that which is 
best in womanhood.) One of those will become 
your companion, I am inclined to think, if human 
nature, meanwhile, do not suffer some remarkable 
change. 



LETTER V. 

The Claims <jf Loie and Lucre. 

Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare, 
And Mammon wins his way where Seraphs might despair. 

Byron. 

YOU calculate when you are married to be mar- 
ried to the man you love, and no other ; yet 
there are a good many chances that you wiH be in- 
fluenced in your choice by other considerations. 
But you should never think of marrying a man 
simply because you love him?} You may love a 
man who has personal habits that will make you 
miserable. You may love a man so lazy or so in- 
efficient that your whole life will be necessarily a 
continued struggle with poverty. You may love a 
man who has no adaptation to you — who is surly and 
stupid and unresponsive; who can give no satisfac- 
tory return of your affection, and who will repulse 
every demonstration of your fondness. You may 
love a man who is supremely selfish. (When you 
become bound for life to a man, he should be ono 
who can make you happier than you would be 



THE CLAIMS OF LOVE AXD LUCRE 117 

alone./ There are doubtless some instances of a 
love "so noble and so self-sacrificing that it will 
welcome poverty and want, with the object of its 
desire, as being far better than riches without it. 
I will not quarrel with this. I only say that, gener- 
ally, competence (I do not mean wealth) is neces- 
sary to that' degree of comfort without which love 
fails of its sweetest exercises and most grateful 
rewards. Love for a man is only one reason why 
you should marry him. There may be a round 
dozen of reasons why you should not. 

A woman's heart is a very queer thing, on the 
whole. y It falls in love in the most unaccountable 
way, with the most unaccountable men. It is a 
hard thing to reason with, and a much harder 
tiling to reason about, yet there are some things 
which may be said to those whose judgment is not 
yet blinded by a passion that contemns reason. 
You should marry a man to whom you will be will- 
ing to bend, or one whom you know you can man- 
age without his knowledge, or with his consent. 
The instances are very rare in which two strong 
wills can harmonize in close companionship. They 
must both be governed by principle, and be mutu- 
ally forbearing from principle. I have seen noble 
instances of this, but not often. The law of nature 
is that the wife shall bend to the husband — that 
her will shall, at last, be subject; yet there are in- 
stances of true affection between man and woman 
when subjection on the part of the m.m becomes 
the law of nature, the woman's judgment being 



118 TITCOM&S LETTERS. 

the best, and her will the strongest. In these 
cases, the female mind possesses masculine char- 
acteristics and the male mind feminine characteris- 
tics; and it is just as proper that her mind should 
govern in these instances as that the male mind 
should govern in others. But there is something 
unnatural in this, after all — or something* I should 
say, out of the common order of things. £# 

If a woman sincerely believe that there is no 
man to whose will she can gladly subordinate her 
own, let her seek out a feminine man, and make 
suit for his hand. A noted female vocalist, whom 
all of us love, had the credit of doing this. He 
gave up even his religion for her, though that may 
not have cost him much. I presume that she gov- 
erns him, and I have yet to learn that the union is 
not thoroughly a happy one. After all, if the lady 
were a graceful subject of a kingly intellect, I can- 
not help thinking that she would be in a more nat- 
ural position, and one in which she would be hap- 
}3ier than she is now. 

You are placed in a position of peculiar tempta- 
tion. You have ambitions to be something more 
than pretty, accomplished, and loved — at least, 
some of you have. You want a career. As a wo- 
man, you see that you cannot have one, save 
through a matrimonial connection. You wish to 
do something — to be something — to be mistress of 
an establishment, or to be associated with one who 
has the public eye, or the public consideration, 
It i& thus that wealth and position come to you 



THE 119 

with very great fcemj b or a 

man of pc id, and, unless he is 

U general!; You 

will try to love him or lean: him, or think 

you love him; or perl u will take a mere 

..at of wej an brin. b 

- ! 

is essential prostitution. /, I know of no di 
encevbetween selling on for a lifetime. 

ale of the soul and body which is made in the 
of her whos take hold on hell. If 

you find yourself willing to give up yoo 
man in a life-long connexion for the house he 
you. for the silks i h which he clothes 

you, i "■' into which he in trod 

for the position with which he endows you. then, 

you know it or not. you become the - 
of the drab whom you so inconsistently spurn from 
your side. In fact, the motives that, have made 
her what she is, maybe white by the side of yours. 

ung for love may seem to be a v 

^oman of the w 
lov e for a cor. 

-iiiej> 
palace. I know of nothing more^cG- 
irJg-bi all the world tha i 

: the name of m to- a woman to 

the bosom of one who I Lth his money, 



120 TITCOMES LETTERS, 

I know what the world says about this matt 
and I very heartily despise the world for it. Wh 
I ask the world if Jane has " made out well " by her*" 
union, and am told that she has done finely, and 
married a man worth a hundred thousand dollars, 
I am tempted to be profane. "When I ask 
the world how Kate has settled, and am in- 
formed, as an essential portion of the reply, that 
her husband is "an excellent provider," I am 
tempted to spit in its face. The conventional idea 
of a happy and proper matrimonial connexion is so 
mean and so arbitrary, that it is no wonder that un- 
soxDhisticated girls sacrifice themselves. I pity 
them from the bottom of my heart. They cannot 
have even the reputation of marrying well unless they 
allow base motives to enter into their calculations. 
They learn early to aim at wealth or position as 
primary and supremely desirable things. A bril- 
liant match in the eyes of the $rorld, atones for 
low morals, uncongenial tastes/ and hike- warm 
hearts. 

Now, if you must make calculations, let me help 
you. Make genuine affection the first thing. 
This is absolutely indispensable. It takes preced- 
ence of everything else. You are not at liberty to 
consider anything before this. A union based 
upon anything else, is, as I have already told you, 
essential prostitution. It is against nature — • 
against God's most wise and benevolent intentions. 
You can make no union with a man, not based on 
this, that will give you happiness. Friendship 



THE CLAIMS OF LOVE AXD LUCRE. 121 

lone will not do. Esteem alone will not do. The 
dea of giving yourself to a man simply because 
you esteem him, and respect him, is disgusting. 
The union of the current of your life with that of a 
man is the great event of your history, and if this 
be not through those natural affinities, sympathies, 
and partialities — that passion of your soul which 
heaven intended should be called into exercise by 
manhood — then is it only a conventional union, and 
no union in fact. Love, then, I say, is the essen- 
tial thing, and yet love, as I have said before, is only 
one thing. There may be in the man who excites 
the holiest and strongest passion of your nature, 
many things which, if you value peace — if you 
value your own purity, even — should lead you to 
pluck that passion from your breast, and turn your 
tack upon its object, that God's light may rest 
upon your brow, even if sorrow make darkness in 
your heart. 

It is hard to examine character, and profit by 
the study, after the heart has become the seat of 
an absorbing passion; but it is indispensably neces- 
sary to do it sometimes. It is far better that the 
passion be excited by the influence of character, 
disposition, and bearing, but when study becomes 
necessary, it should be entered upon conscientious- 
ly; for the second requisite for a happy union is 
Bound character. A woman possessing the best 
of womanhood cannot be happy with a 
man who has not a sound character. He may 
have a good disposition, he may be intelligent, he 



122 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

may have wealth and honor, but if his character be 
weak or faulty, she has no reliance; and she must 
ultimately lose her respect for him. When respect 
is gone, she may love, she may pity, she may for- 
give, but she cannot be happy : Disposition comes 
in for consideration in the third place, and worldly 
circumstances in the fourth, or perhaps still lower 
in the scale. I might speak of another thing, re- 
quisite to happiness in the highest degree, but I 
will not, now and here. 

In the consideration of worldly circumstances, be 
wise. / Eemember that if your lover be intelligent, 
healthy, the master of a business or a profession, 
he stands many more chances to die in the posses- 
sion of wealth or competence than he would if 
rich now, and without a settled business and set- 
tled purpose.)^ I have watched the results of many 
matches, and I have seen ten which started with a 
fortune to be acquired, turn out well in a worldly 
point of view, where I have seen one result happi- 
ly, starting with the fortune made. If a ytmng 
man is honorable, intelligent, industrious, and 
manly in every respect, and you love him, marry 
him. SThere is no power under heaven that has a 
moral right to stand between you and your happi- 
ness> Many a poor girl who married for money 
now pines in poverty, and covets the position of 
girls whose wiser choice she once contemned^ 

I speak in this way for two reasons. The first is, 
that it is not only your right but your duty to con- 
sider whether a life of certain poverty wili be Com- 



THE CLAIMS OF LOVE AXB LUCRE 123 

pensated by a life of association with the man you 
love. The second is, that when you take this mat- 
ter into consideration you should make your judg- 
ment upon a sound basis. Wealth in hand, with- 
out business habits, business tastes, and business 
interests, is the most unreliable thing in the world. 
It may even spoil a good lover, and in time trans- 
form him into a loafer or a sot. On the contrary, 
good business habits, good character, enterprise, 
ambition — all these combined — are almost sure to 
secure competence and success. If you would rely 
on anything, rely on these, for they are the only 
reliable things. Misfortune may deal harshly with 
these, but that is the business of Providence. 

I fancy one reply that may be made to all this 
wise talk. "Women practically have comparatively 
little choice in the matter. They grow up from 
the cradle with the idea that it is a horrible thing 
to live and die an old maid. That, in the minds 
of half the girls, is the most terrible thing in all 
the world. They can abide anything better than 
that. So they feel a kind of obligation to jump at 
the first offer, they are so much afraid they shall 
never have another. (Let them remember that a 
mismated match is much worse than an unmated 
life.^ I believe that marriage is the true condition, 
and that no man or woman can fully enjoy life un- 
married; but I know they will be more unhappy il 
they are badly matched than if not matched at all. 
But women have more choice than they think, and 
would have still more than they do, if their inter- 



124 TITCOMFS LETTERS. 

course with, young men were placed upon the 
basis indicated in my last letter. 

Most young women study the character of men 
but little, because they have but little opportunity. 
They see comparatively few, and, through the 
character of their intercourse, know them very in- 
completely. It is a sin and a shame that young 
women enjoy such inferior opportunities of learn- 
ing the character of young men, — of weighing, com- 
paring, and judging them. It is a shame that they 
have no more opportunities for a choice. My own 
wife very fortunately got an excellent husband, but 
it is something for which she is to be grateful to an 
overruling Providence, for her own knowledge had 
very little to do with it. I could have cheated her 
beyond all account. I tell you, men want studying 
for some years, before you find them out, and it 
becomes you to run fewer risks than most of your 
sex run in this business. It is a good deal of a step 
— this getting married, and I am very anxious that 
you snail know a great many men, that you shall 
get the one you love, that he shall be worthy of 
you, and tnat you shall be happy all the days of 
your life. 



LETTER VI. 

TJie Prudent and Proper Use of Language. 

Of all the griefs that harass the distressed, 
Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest. 

Samuel Johnson. 

And lovelier things have mercy shown 
To every failing bnt their own, 
And every woe a tear can claim 
Except an erring sister's shame. 

Byeon. 

I HAVE met with a good many young women, 
first and last, whose intellects were of that keen, 
quick variety which delights in uttering sharp 
things — often very hard things. They do it, at 
first, playfully; they produce a laugh which flatters 
them; and they soon get to doing it wantonly. 
They acquire an appetite for praise, and they be- 
come willing to procure it at whatever expense to 
others. Genuine wit in a man is almost always 
genial; wit in a woman, however genial it may be 
at first, almost always gets- into personalities, 



126 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

sooner or later, which makes it very dangerous and 
very hateful. Man is held in restraint, whatever 
his tendencies may be, by the consideration that, 
as a man, he will be held responsible for his words; 
women presume upon the fact that they are wo- 
men, in taking license to say what they choose of 
each other, and of men in particular. There is 
not always — perhaps there is not generally — ma- 
lice in these sharp and hard speeches, but they 
poison, nevertheless. They poison her who 
utters them, and they poison those who suffer 
them. The utterer becomes the student, for a 
purpose, of the weak points of her friends, and 
they learn to hate her. I have known not a few 
women whose personal witticisms were enjoyed by 
the gossip-loving crowd around her, every man of 
whom would as soon think of marrying a tigress as 
the one he was flattering by the applause of his laugh. 
Therefore I say that to be a witty woman is a 
very dangerous thing. To be a witty woman is to 
be the subject of very great temptations, for person- 
ality forms the very zest of gossip — an employment 
of which most women, I think, know something by 
experiment. Men are afraid of witty women, es- 
pecially those who delight in making cutting 
speeches. They say, very rationally, that if a wo- 
man will secure praise at the expense of one friend, 
she will also at the expense of others, and that no 
one can be safe. /There is nothing in my eyes 
more admirable in a woman than an honest wish to 
hear no one spoken against — than that considers 



THE PROBER USE OF LANGUAGE. 127 

tion for the feelings of othera/which leads her to 
treat ail faults with tenderness, and ail weaknesses 
and natural unpleasant peculiarities with indul- 
gence. One of the most attractive sights in the 
world, to any yoa-ig man of common sensibility, is 
that of a young ■\vv.raan who not only will neither 
say nor hear ill ol **ny one, but who takes special 
pains to notice those whom the crowd neglect. 
Such a woman is the admired of all whose admira- 
tion is worth securing. And now, young woman, 
if you are one of the sharp ones, and are ternpted 
to say sharp things, remember that you are in 
very great danger of injming yourself, not only in 
your own soul, but in the eyes of all those whom 
you imagine you are pleasing. 

I think, as a general thing, that women aro 
harder in their judgments of then own sex than 
men are of theirs, or even of them. This arises 
partly from jealousy — a wish to stand among the 
uppermost in the popular esteem. The praise of 
women, poured into the ears of other women, is 
not usually gratefully received. The disposition of 
women to judge harshly of each other is seen par- 
ticularly in those instances in which a woman has 
taken a false step. Here the fact is patent; — a wo- 
man forgets, or forgives, much less promptly than 
a man. However deep the repentance, however 
decided the reformation, a woman never forgets 
that her sister has sinned, notwithstanding the 
fact that weakness and misfortune and a hundred 
mitigating if not exculpating circumstances plead 



128 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

in her "behalf. It is the same with less important 
lapses of behavior, in a corresponding degree. I 
do not know bat this is one of the safeguards which 
God intended should be around a woman's path, 
but it seems to me a very unwomanly and a very 
unchristian thing. It seems to me, too, to be a 
very unnatural thing. I judge that, much more 
than a man, a woman should be interested in se- 
curing justice for her own sex; and that if a sin- 
ning or a silly woman should find a charitable de- 
fender anywhere, it should be among those who, 
like her, are exposed to the temptations, and par- 
ticularly to the uncharitable misconstructions, of a 
captious world. 

What I would insist upon, is, that you not 
only do not wound the feelings of your own sex by 
sharp criticisms, but that you be heartily enlisted 
in maintaining their honor. Do not think that 
you do this by putting down this one and that, in 
order to make your own immaculateness the. more 
conspicuous. Believe what is generahy true, that 
those who sin are those who sin rather through 
weakness than vicious tendency; that villains who 
wear cravats and waistcoats — the very men whom 
you are by no means particular enough to exclude 
from your company — are those who most deserve 
your reproaches. 

And now that I am upon this subject of talk, it 
will be well to say all I have to say upon it. It is 
a very common thing for young women to in- 
dulge in hyperbole. A pretty dress is very apt t>> 



THE PROPER USE OF LANGUAGE. 129 

be "perfectly splendid;" a disagreeable person is 
too often " perfectly hateful;" a party in which 
the company enjoyed themselves, somehow be- 
comes transmuted into the "most delightful thing 
ever seen." A young man of respectable parts and 
manly bearing is very often "such a magnificf nt 
fellow!" The adjective "perfect," that stands so 
much alone as never to have the privilege of help 
from comparatives and superlatives, is sadly over- 
worked, in company with several others of the in- 
tense and extravagant order. The result is that, by 
the use of such language as this, your opinion soon 
becomes valueless. 

A woman who deals only in superlatives demon- 
strates at once the fact that her judgment is subor- 
dinate to her feelings, and that her opinions are en- 
tirely unreliable. All language thus loses its power 
and significance. The same words are brought 
into use to describe a ribbon in a milliner's win- 
dow, as are employed in the endeavor to do justice 
to Thalberg's execution of Beethoven's most heav- 
enly symphony. The use of hyperbole is so com- 
mon among women that a woman's criticism is 
generally without value. Let me insist upon this 
thing. Be more economical in the use of your 
mother tongue. Apply your terms of praise with 
precision; use epithets with some degree of judg- 
ment and fitness. Do not waste your best and 
highest words' upon such inferior objects, and find 
that when you have met with something which 
really is superlatively great and good, the terms by 






130 TITC0MW8 LETTERS. 

which you would distinguish it have all been 
thrown away upon inferior things — that you are 
bankrupt in expression. If a thing is simply good, 
say so; if pretty, say so; if yery pretty, say so; if 
fine, say so; if very fine, say so; if grand, say so; 
if sublime, say so; if magnificent, say so; if splen- 
did, say so. These words all have different mean- 
ings, and you may say them all of as many differ- 
ent objects, and not use the'" word "perfect " once. 
That is a very large word. You will probably be 
obliged to save it for application to the Deity, or to 
his works, or to that serene rest which remains for 
those who love Him. 

Young women are very apt to imbibe another 
bad habit, namely, the use of slang. I was walk- 
ing along the street the other day when I met an 
.^elegantly dressed lady and gentleman upon the 
sidewalk. My attention was the more attracted to 
them because they were evidently strangers. At 
any rate they impressed me as being very thoroughly 
refined and genteel people. As I came within hear- 
ing of their voices — they were quietly chatting along 
the way — I heard these words from the woman's lips: 
" You may bet your life on that." I was disgust- 
ed. I could almost have boxed her ears. I 
once remember being in the company of a, belle 
— one who had had a winter's reign in Washington. 
Some kind of game was in progress, when, in a 
moment of surprise, she exclaimed, "My gra- 
cious!" Now you may regard this as a finical no- 
tion, but I tell you that woman fell as flatly in my 



TEE PROPER U8E OF LANGUAGE 131 

esteem as if she had uttered an oath. A lady fresh 
from Paiis, once informed me that it would do the 
residents of a certain quiet Tillage a great deal of 
good to be " stirred up with a long pole." Let us 
see how you like this kind of talk. 
^If you wish to be an "A No. 1" woman, you 
have got to " toe the mark," and be less "hifalu- 
tin." "You may bet your head on that." You 
may sing " slightually " "like a martingale," you 
may "spin street yarn " at the rate of ten knots an 
hour, you may " talk like a book," you may dance 
as if you were on "a regular break-down," you may 
"turnup your nose at common folks," and play 
the piano "mighty fine," but " I-tell-you" you 
* ; can't come to tea. " " You may be handsome, but 
you can't come in." You might just as well " caTe 
in," first as last, and " absquatulate," for you can't 
"put it through," "any way you can fix it." If 
you imagine that you may "go it while you're 
young, for when you're old you can't," you won't 
* ' come it, " " by a long chalk. " " Own up " now, and 
" do the straight thing," and I'll "set you down" 
as "one of the women we read of." If you can't 
"come up to the scratch," why I must "let you 
slide." But if you liaTe a "sneakin' notion" for 
being a " regular brick, " there is no other way — 
"not as you knows on " — "no sir-ree-hoss ?" If a 
young man should "kind o' shine up to you," and 
you should " cotton to him," and he should hear you 
say "by the jiunping Moses," or " by the living 
jingo," or "my goodness," or "I tow," or " go it, 



132 TITCOMB'S LETTEUS. 

Betsy, 111 hold your bonnet," or "mind your eye/ 
or "hit 'im agin," or "take me away," or " dr? 
up, now," or '''draw your sled," or "cut stick," 
or "give him particular fits," he would pretty 
certainly "evaporate."^ 

I would by no means insinuate that all young wo- 
men use slang as coarse as this, but I acknowledge 
to have heard some of these phrases from friends 
whom I really esteem. Is not the use of these 
phrases, and of phrases like them, whose number is 
legion, a very vulgar habit? It seems so to me, 
and I can hear them from the lips of no pretty wo- 
man except with pain, and a certain degree of di- 
minution of my respect for her. The habit cer- 
tainly detracts from womanly dignity. It can be 
dropped without the slightest danger of going into 
that extreme of precision in the use of language, 
which takes out all the life and freedom from social 
intercourse. Slang is bad enough in young men, 
and they indulge in far too much of it; but in a 
young woman, it is disgusting. It is not the out- 
growth of fine natures; it is not accordant with re- 
fined taste. Any young woman who indulges in it 
does it at a very sad expense to her mind, and 
manners, and reputation. Therefore, beware of it; 
discard it; guard the door of your lips, and leave 
it to those coarse specimens of your sex of whose 
natures and habits of thought it is the natural and 
fitting expression. 

One more bad habit of your tongues, and I con- 
clude. It is very common for young women to im- 



THE PROPER USE OF LAXGUAGE. 133 

that all tradesmen have a desire to cheat them. 
vrill talk to the provision dealers and ped 
who call at their doors, and to the tradesmen in 
their shops, with a hai would not be 

en in a man. Men become harden 
kind of thing, and expect it ; and very nato 
choose those who suspect them, and accuse them 
of cheating — who chaffer, and cheapen, and 
fault — for the victims of their sharps 

ring woman who treats every man with whom 
she trades as a gentleman, giving him her 
dence, and throwing herself upon his honor and 
generosity, will stand the best possible chance to 
be fairly dealt by. I except Jews with China 
ware, and men of Celtic origin with short pipes in 
their mou; is always safe to dose a bargain 

with such persons before entering into any c 
tions; but even this may be done without lc 
self-respect. If you see that a man designs to 
cheat you. it is not lady-like to put yourself upon a 
footing with him, and undertake to extort a bar- 
gain from him. Dismiss him without a word. 
You cannot afford to waste any breath 1 1 
pect upon him. 

Because a man has a thh — because he 

stands behind a counter, or drives a cart, "he is not 

ssarily no gentler.: - thing, 

those men deserv : 

at your hands as if they were in your parlor, 
have no right to banter them. You have no right 
to suspect them — to say harsh things to them — to 



134 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

depreciate their wares, and place them practically 
in the position of sharpers and knaves. It is not 
lady-like for you to put their politeness to the 
test. They will not insult you, and in that very 
fact vindicate their claim to your good opinion and 
polite treatment. You may get the credit with 
them of being sharp, hard customers, but they will 
dislike you, and if they speak of you, will not say 
anything to flatter you. 



LETTER VII. 
Ho usew ifery and In dusiry. 

She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the dis- 
taff. . . . She is not afraid of the snow for her household; for all 
her household are clothed with scarlet. . . . Strength and 
honor are her clothing, and she shall rejoice in time to come. 

Solomon. 

AMOXG tlie more homely but most essential 
accomplishments of a young woman is that 
of housewifery. There are many things at the 
present day to interfere with its acquisition, but 
the fact that it is essential should lead you to sub- 
ordinate to it those which are not. "We hear a 
great deal about the laziness of the present gener- 
ation of girls. I t h ink the accusation is unjust. 
Girls who acquire a really good education now, ac- 
complish much more genuine hard work than 
those in " the good old times " who only learned to 
read and write, and occupied the most of then time 
in the kitchen and dairy. Nothing that can be 
called education and accomplishment can be 
achieved without great labor; and, in my opinion. 



136 Tl TCOMFS LETTERS. 

the principal reason why good housewifery is so 
much neglected, as an accomplishment, is that the 
time is so much occupied in study. Laziness is 
very apt to come with wealth, and there are un- 
doubtedly a great many more lazy girls now than 
fifty years ago. They are certainly a very undesir- 
able article to have about, and I pity the poor fel- 
low who gets one of them for a companion; but I 
say candidly that I do not think there are any 
more naturally lazy girls in the world than usual. 

You expect, one of these days, to be the mistress 
of a house. Your comfort and happiness, and the 
comfort and happiness of your husband, will de- 
pend very much upon your ability to order that 
house well. If your companion be in humble cir- 
cumstances, you will very likely be obliged to do 
the most of your work yourself. In this case, a 
thorough knowledge of, and taste for, housewifery 
will be very necessary to you. If you marry a 
man of competence or wealth, a knowledge of 
good housewifery is quite as essential to you as if 
you were required to do your own work. The ex- 
penses of your house will be large or small, as you 
are a bad or a good housekeeper. If you do not 
know how to do the work of the house; if you 
have no practical knowledge of all the offices and 
economies of an establishment, you will be depen- 
dent. So far from being the mistress of your 
house, you will be only its guest. Your servants 
will circumvent you, they will cheat you, they wil) 
make you miserable. If they do not perform their 



EC FEBTA1 J8TBY. 

work properly, tlirough "wilfulness or ignorance, 

i cannot tell them better. You will scold them 

for things which you cannot tell them how to 

mend, you will be unjust, and you will not keep 

them. Many a really good servant is constantly 

suffering from grievances growing directly from 

the ignorance of her mistress. Unless you are 

willing to take up for life with a boarding-house — 

a p] eople to vegetate in — you must be a 

good housewife. It matters not whether you are 

rich or poor. You need a practical knowledge of 

kery, >i the laundry, of the prices and qualities 

of provisions, of chamber work — of everything that 

ra into the details of home life. 

, :>urse, if you have no mother who is capable 

I : tea ::-ing you these things, you are in a measure 

ble for not learning them. I pity a family 

of girls whose mother is a know-nothing and a do- 

..i^.u. I do not hi ds for not wishing to 

put the:. .uder the tuition of the cook and 

maid-of -all- work. But even when you find 

inder disadvantages like these, you 

onot afford to become a woman without knowing 

something of the homely utilities of life. Your 

a of mind — your own good sense 
ready ingen U give you a clue to the nr 

which pi Ornately make plain. 

ir comfort, your independence, your reputation, 

tt husband's respect for you, depend so much 

upon your ability to keep house well, that I cai.: 

leave the subje ing upon the im- 



138 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

portance of jour learning to do it while you have 
the chance. There are few higher compliments 
that can be paid to a young woman than that 
which accords to her the character of an excellent 
housekeeper. There is no reputation which will 
more thoroughly tend to confirm a young woman 
in the esteem of young men, or more forcibly 
commend her to their esteem than that of being 
acquainted, practically, with the details of the 
kitchen and the economies of housekeeping. 

This naturally introduces me to a discussion of 
the benefits of physical industry, and the assump- 
tion of regular household duties. There is no better 
relief to study than the regular performance of spe- 
cial duties in the house. To feel that one is really 
doing something every day, that the house is the 
tidier for one's efforts, and the comfort of the fam- 
ily enhanced, is the surest warrant of content and 
cheerfulness. There is something about this habit 
of daily work — this regular performance of duty — 
which tends to regulate the passions, to give calm- 
ness and vigor to the mind, to impart a healthy 
tone to the body, and to diminish the desire for 
life in the street and for resort to gossiping compan- 
ions. 

Y/ere I as rich as Croesus, my girls should have 
something to do regularly, just as soon as they 
should become old enough to do anything. They 
should, in the first place, make their own bed, and 
take care of their own room. They should dress 
each other. They should sweep a portion of the 



HO USEWIFER Y AXD INJD USTR Y. 139 

house. . They should learn, above all things, to 

themselves, and thus to be independent in all 

circumstances. A woman, helpless from any other 

! than sickness, is essentially a nuisance. 

There is nothing womanly and ladylike in help- 

I lessness. My policy would be, as girls grow up, to 
assign to them special duties, first in one part of 

> the house, then in another, until they should be- 
come acquainted with all housewifely offices ; and 
I should have an object in this beyond the simple 
acquisition of a knowledge of housewifery. It 
should be for the acquisition of habits of physical 
industry — of habits that conduce to the health of 
body and mind — of habits that give them an in- 
sight into the nature of labor, and inspire within 
them a genuine sympathy with those whose lot it 
is to labor. 

All young mind is uneasy if it be good for any- 
thing. There is not the genuine human stuff in a 
girl who is habitually and by nature passive, 
placid, and inactive. The body and the mind 
must both be in motion. If this tendency to ac- 
tivity be left to run loose — undirected into chan- 
nels of usefulness — % spoiled child is the result. A 
girl growing up to womanhood, is, when unem- 
ployed, habitually uneasy. The mind aches and 

I chafes because it wants action, for a motive. 
Now a mind in this condition is not benefited by 
the command to stay at home, or the withdrawal 
from companions. It must be set to work. This 
vital energy that is struggling to find relief in de- 



140 T1TC0MFS LETTERS. 

monstration should be so directed that habits may 
be formed, — habits of industry that obviate the wish 
for change and unnecessary play, and form a regular 
drain upon it. Otherwise, the mind becomes dissi- 
pated, the will irresolute, and confinement irksome. 
Girls will never be happy, except in the company 
of their playmates, unless home becomes to them 
a scene of regular duty and personal usefulness. 

There is another obvious advantage to be de- 
rived from the habit of engaging daily upon 
special household duties. The imagination of 
girls is apt to become active to an unhealthy de- 
gree, when no corrective is employed. False 
views of life are engendered, and labor is regarded 
as menial. Ease comes to be looked upon as a 
supremely desirable thing, so that when the real, 
inevitable cares of life come, there is no prepara- 
tion for them, and weak complainings or ill-na- 
tured discontent are the result. 

And here I am naturally introduced to another 
subject. Young woman, the glory of your life is 
to do something and to be something. You very 
possibly may have formed the idea that ease and 
personal enjoyment are the ends of your life. 
This is a terrible mistake. Development in the 
broadest sense and in the highest direction is the 
end of your life. You may possibly find ease with 
it, and a great deal of precious personal enjoyment, 
or your life may be one long experience of self- 
denial. If you wish to be something more than 
the pet and plaything of a man; if you would rise 



MO USEWIFEE Y AND ISD USEE Y. 1 il 

above the position of a pretty toy, or the ornamen- 
tal fixture of an establishment, you have got a 
work to do. You have got a position to maintain 
in society; you havs got the poor and the sick to 
visit; you may possibly have a family to rear and 
train; you have got to take a load of care upon 
your shoulders and bear it through life. You 
have got a character to sustain; and I hope that 
you will have the heart of a husband to cheer and 
strengthen. Ease is not for you. Selfish enjoy- 
ment is not for you. The world is to be made 
better by you. You have got to suffer and to 
work; and if there be a spark of the true fire in 
you, your hearts will respond to these words. 

The time will come when you shall see that all 
your toil, and care, and pain, and sorrow, and 
practical sympathy for others has built you up into 
a strength of womanhood which will despise ease 
as an end of life, and pity those who are content 
with it. Get this idea that your great business is 
simply to live at ease out of your head at once. 
There is nothing noble and ennobling in it. Your 
mental and physical powers can only give you 
worthy happiness in the using. They were made 
for use; and a lazy woman is inevitably miserable. 
I do not put this matter of enjoyment before you 
as the motive for action. I simply state the fact 
that it is a result of action — an incident of a lif e 
worthily spent. 

When you have properly comprehended and re- 
ceived this idea, the recreations of life and the 



U2 TITGOMITS LETTERS. 

pleasures of social intercourse will take their appro- 
priate positions with relation to the business of 
life — its staple duties. Becreation will become re- 
creation — simply the renewal of your powers, that 
they may all the better perform the work which 
you have undertaken, or which circumstances have 
devolved upon you. Social pleasure will rise into 
a sympathetic communion with natures and lives 
earnest like your own, upon the subjects nearest 
your hearts, and it will give you strength and guid- 
ance. The pleasures of life will become the wells, 
scattered along the way, where you will lay down 
your burdens for the moment, wipe your brows, 
and drink, that you may go into the work before 
you refreshed in body and mind. In these quiet 
hours you will feel a healthy thrill of happiness 
which those who seek pleasure for its own sake 
never know. 

There are few objects in this world more repul- 
sive to me than a selfish woman — a woman who 
selfishly consults her own enjoyments, her own 
ease, her own pleasure. 7 If you have the slightest 
desire to be loved; if you would have your pres- 
ence a welcome one in palace and cottage alike; if 
you would be admired, respected, revered; if you 
would have all sweet human sympathies clustering 
around you while you live, and the tears of a mul- 
titude of friends shed upon your grave when you 
die, you must be a working woman — living and 
working for others, denying yourself for others, 
and building up for yourself a character, strong, 



EO USE WIFER Y ASD IXD D 8 TR T. 143 

symmetrical, beautiful If I were you, I would 

rather be that insensate and qui-.- Qg shadow 

which the wounded soldier" ki :he noble 

nee Nightingale passed his weary pillow, than 

the pampered ire of luxury, wiio has no 

above her personal ease and pei 
adornment. 

Do not seek out for yourselves any prominent 
held of service where you will a:: attention 

of the world. Eemain where God places you. 
Some of the noblest heroisms of the world have 
been achieved in humble life. The poor ye have 
always with you. The miserable are always around 
you. You can tighten your father's burdens. 
You can restrain your* brothers from vicious society. 
You can relieve your failing and fading mother of 
much care. You can gather the ragged and ignor- 
rant children at your knee, and teach them some- 
thing of a better life than they have seen. You 
can become angels of light and goodness to many 
stricken hearts. You can read to the aged. You 
can do many things which will be changed to 
dngs upon your own soul Florence Nightin- 
gale did her work in her place; do your work in 
yours, and your Father who seeth in secret sh; 
ward you openly. 

I would be the last one to cast a shadow on your 
brows, but I would undeceive you at the f i 
that you may begin life with right ideas. I i 
real— it is a real and earnest thing. It has homely 
details, painful passages, and a crown oi care fox 



Hi TITCOMB'b LETTERS. 

every brow. I seek to inspire yon with a wish 
and a will to meet it with a womanly spirit. I 
seek to point yon to its nobler meanings and its 
higher results. The tinsel with which your imag- 
ination has invested it will all fall off of itself, so 
soon as yon shall fairly enter upon its experiences. 
Then if these ideas have.no place in yon, yon will 
be obliged to acquire them slowly and painfully, 
or you will sink into a poor, selfish, discontented 
creature — and be, so far as others are concerned, 
either a nonentity, or a disagreeable hanger-on 
and looker-on. So I say, begin to take up life's 
duties now. Learn something of what life is. 
before you take upon yourself its graver responsi- 
bilities. 



LETTER Vm. 

The Beauty and Blessedness of Female Piety. 

The cross, if rightly borne, shall be 
No burden, but support to thee. 

WmiTlHR. 

YOUNG women, this is my last letter ad- 
dressed specially to you; and as I take your 
hand, and give you my adieu, I wish to say a few 
words which shall be worth a great deal to you. 
It is my opinion that to a certain extent, in cer- 
tain directions, God meant that you should be de- 
pendent upon men, and that in this dependence 
should exist some of your prof oundest and sweet- 
est attractions, and your noblest characteristics. 
Your bodies are smaller than those of men. You 
were not made to wrestle with the rough forces of 
nature. You were not made for war, nor com- 
merce, nor agriculture. In all these departments, 
the 'iron wills and the iron muscles of man are 
alone at home. The bread you eat, and the fabrics 
fou wear, are to bo gathered from the earth by 



146 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

men. You are to be protected by men. They 
build your houses ; they guard your persons. 
It is entirely natural for you to rely upon them 
for much that you have. You give, or may 
give, great rewards for all this. It is not a menial 
relation, nor one which detracts from your dignity 
in the least. The circle of human "duties is only 
complete by the union of those of man and woman. 
Man has his sphere — woman, hers. We cannot 
talk of superiority among spheres and duties that 
are alike essential. Suffice it that, in the degree 
in which you are dependent upon man for support 
and protection, does he owe support and protec- 
tion to you. He is bound to do for you what you, 
through the peculiarities of your constitution, are 
unable to do for yourself. You are never to quar- 
rel with this arrangement. You will only make 
yourself unhappy by it, because by quarrelling 
with God's plans, you essentially unsex yourself, 
and become a discord. Therefore, recognize your 
dependence gladly and gracefully. Be at home 
in it, for in it lies your power for influence and for 
good. 

This advances us a step towards the point to 
which I wish to lead you. Now, if you will go 
with me into a circle of praying Christians, or if 
you will take up with me a list of the members of 
any church, I will show you a fact which I wish to 
connect with the facts stated in the preceding para- 
graph. You will find, I suppose, that at least 
two-thirds of the members of the prayer-meeting 



THE BEAUTY OF FEMALE PIETY. 147 

are women, and that the church register will show 
a corresponding proportion of female names. 
Why is this? Is it because women are weakej 
than men, simply? Is it because women are sub- 
ject to smaller temptations than men? Is it be- 
cause their passions are less powerful than those 
of men? Not at all — or not in any important de- 
gree. It is because a feeling of dependence is na- 
tive in the female heart. It is because the pride 
of independence has little or no place there. It is 
because the female mind has to undergo compara- 
tively a small revolution to become religious. 
Rather, perhaps, I should say, that one powerful 
barrier that stands before the path of every man in 
his approach to the valley of humiliation does not 
oppose the passage of the true woman. I suppose 
it is very rare that those who are denominated 
" strong-minded women " become religious. The 
pride of personal independence is built before 
them by fcheir own hands. 

So sweet and so natural a thing is piety among 
women that men have come to regard a woman 
without it as strange, if not unhealthy. The 
coarsest and most godless men often select pious 
wives, because they see that piety softens, and 
deepens, and elevates every natural grace of per- 
son, and every accomplishment of mind. Now 
my opinion is that Heaven, seeing how important 
it is for you to be its own children, in profession 
and in spirit, has given special favors to your sex, 
through this simple fact or principle of depen- 



148 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

dence. It is your work to soften and refine men. 
Men living without you, by themselves, become 
savage and sinful. I The purer you are, the more 
are they restrained, and the more are they elevat- 
ed. It is your work to form the young mind,— to 
give it direction and instruction — to develop its 
love for the good and the true. It is your work to 
make home happy — to nourish all the virtues, and 
instil all the sentiments which build men up into 
good citizens. The foundation of our national char- 
acter is laid by the mothers of the nation. I say 
that Heaven, seeing the importance to the world of 
piety in you, has so modified your relations to man 
that it shall be comparatively easy for you to de- 
scend into that valley, over which all must walk, 
before their feet can stand upon the heights of 
Christian experience, between which and Heaven's 
door the ascent is easy. 

L For my own part, I shrink with horror from a 
godless woman. j There seems to be no light in 
her — no glory proceeding from her. There is 
something monstrous about her. I can see why 
men do not become religious. It is a. hard 
thing — it is, at least, if experience and observation 
are to be relied on — for a man whose will has been 
made stern by encounters in the great battle of 
life, who is conscious of power and accustomed to 
have the minds around him bend to his, who pos- 
sesses the pride of manhood and the self-esteem 
that springs naturally in the mind of one in his 
position, to become ? i as a little child. " Woman 



TEE BEA UTY OF FEMALE FIFTY. U9 

has only to recognize her dependence npon One 
higher than man. and, in doing this, is obliged to 
do but little violence to her habits of thought, and 
no violence at all to such sentiments of indepen- 
dence as stand most in the vray of man. So I say 
. godless woman is a monstrous woman. She 
is an unreasonable woman. She is an offensive 
woman. Even an utterly godless man, unless he 
be debauched and debased to the position of an 
animal, deems such a woman without excuse. He 
looks on her with suspicion. He would not have 
such an one to take the care of his children. He 
would not trust her. 

I do not propose to offer you any incentives to 
drawn from a future condition of rewaids 
and punishments. I leave it to the pulpits whose 
ministrations you attend to talk of this matter in 
their own way. My whole argument shall relate 
to the proprieties and necessities of the present 
life. It is proper that you serve the Being who 
made you, and that you love the One who re- 
deemed you. It is proper that to all your graces 
you add that of unsehishness. It is proper that 
all the elements of your character be harmonized 
and sublimated by the tenderest devotion to the 
'; One altogether lovely. 55 It is proper that your 
heart be purified, so that all the influence which 
)f it, through the varied relationships of 
be good, and only good. I mean by the 
word " proper " all that the word proper can mean. 
It is eternally and immutably fit. I mean thai it 



150 TITCOMffS LETTEBS. 

is improper and unfit that you should fail in piety. 
I mean that by carrying with you a rebellious 
and cold and careless heart, you introduce among 
the sweet harmonies of the world, a harsh discord, 
which it is not fit and proper that you should in- 
troduce. You are a wandering star. You are a 
voiceless bird. You are a motionless brook. The 
strings of your soul are not in tune with those 
chords which the Infinite hand sweeps as he 
evolves the music of the universe. Your being does 
not respond to the touch of Providence; and if 
Beauty, and Truth, and Goodness, and Love, come 
down to you, like angels out of heaven, and sing 
you their sweetest songs, you do not see their 
wings, nor recognize their home and parentage. I 
say it is not proper — it is inexpressibly unfit that 
you — a woman — with delicate sensibilities, and 
pure instincts and a dependent nature, should 
ignore the relations which exist between your soul 
and God, and put a veil of blackness between the 
light which He has lighted within you, and that 
Infinite fountain of light still open and ready to 
fill all your being with its divine radiance. 

Then, as to your necessities: First, remember what 
you are. You are really the consolers of the world. 
You attend the world in sickness; you give all its 
medicines; your society soothes the world after its 
toil, and rewards it for its perplexities; you receive 
the infant when it enters irpon existence; you 
drape the cold form of the aged when life is past; 
you settle the little difficulties, and assuage the 



THE BEA UTT OF FEU ALE PIETY. 151 

sorrows of childhood; you minister to the poor 
and the distressed. Do you suppose that out of 
the resources of your poor heart, you can supply 
all the draughts that will be made upon your sym- 
pathies and their varied ministry? Do you believe 
that you cany within your own bosom light for the 
dying, hope for the despairing, consolation for the 
bereft, patience for the sick? Nay, do you believe 
that you have light and hope and consolation and 
patience sufficient for your own soul's wants, while 
performing the ministries to which, in Heaven's 
economy, you are appointed? Piety is, then, an 
absolute necessity to you. You can no more per- 
form these offices to which you are called, properly 
and efficiently, without piety, than a bird can fly 
without wings. You would be trying to inake 
bricks without straw. Think of a woman by the 
side of a dying sister, or a sick child, or a sorrow- 
ing friend, or a broken-hearted and broken- 
spirited man, without a word of heaven in her 
mouth — without so much as the ability to whisper 
" Our Father," or even to point her ringer hope- 
fully towards the stars!" 

Again, your life and duties are peculiar, as your 
sphere is distinct. If you lead a worthy, womanly 
life, it will be a home life — free from great excite- 
ments./ The current of your thoughts will flow in 
retired channels./ You will hear, outside, the 
Draying of trumpgts, and the roll of drums, and 
the din of wheels, and the rash and roar of the 
world's great business. Oftentimes, when you are 



152 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

busy with your modest affairs, and going through 
the wearying routine of your life, you will be 
tempted to repine at their quietness and insipid- 
ness. Many a woman does the work of her life 
without being seen or noticed by the world. The 
world sees a family reared to virtue — one child 
after another growing into Christian manhood and 
womanhood, and at last it sees them all gathered 
around a grave where the mother that bore them 
rests from her labors. But the world has never 
seen that quiet woman laboring for her children, 
making their clothes, providing their food, teach- 
ing them their prayers, and making their homes 
comfortable and happy. 

The world knows nothing, or does not think, of 
the fears, the pains, and the anxieties inseparable 
from the mother's office. She bears them alone, 
and discharges her peculiar responsibilities without 
assistance. No individual in the world can do a 
mother's work for her. A family of young immor- 
tals is committed to her hands. The rearing and 
training of these form a business to which she has 
served no apprenticeship. If divine guidance and 
support be necessary to any one in the world, 
they are necessary to the wife and mother. It 
is a sad, sad thought to any son or daughter that 
his or her mother was not a woman of piety^; The 
boy that feels that his name is mentioned in a 
good mother's prayers, is comparatively safe from 
vice, and the ruin to which it leads. The sweetest 
thought that N. P. Willis ever penned grew out 



THE BEAUTY OF FEMALE PIETY. 153 

of a reference to his pious mother's prayers for 
him. Tossed by the waves, in a vessel which was 
bearing him homeward, he wrote: 

- Sleep safe, wave- worn mariner, 
Nor fear to-night nor storm nor sea ! 
The ear of Heaven bends low to her; 
He comes to shore who sails vnth me!** 

Will no piety be necessary to you? Will not 
your piety be necessaiy to your children? 

And now, young women, a few closing words. I 
have no doubt many of you have read these letters 
with care, and with an earnest wish to profit by 
them. They have been written in all honesty and 
sincerity, and I leave them with you. The opin- 
ions I have given you have not been hastily 
formed, nor has the counsel I have urged upon 
you arisen frorn anything but a conscientious con- 
viction of your wants, and a desire to help you to 
a womanhood, the noblest to be achieved in this 
world. Your happiness is very much in your own 
hands; so are your usefulness and your good 
name. I do not ask you to be anything but a 
glad, sunny woman. I would have no counsels of 
mine recommended by long faces and formal be- 
havior. I would have you so at peace with Heaven, 
with the world and with yourself, that tears shall 
flow only at the call of sympathy. I would have 
you immaculate as light, devoted to all good 
deeds, industrious, intelligent, patient, heroic. 
And crowning e 'ery grace of person and mind, 



154 TITC0ME8 LETTERS. 

every accomplishment, every noble sentiment, 
every womanly faculty, every delicate instinct, 
every true impulse, I would see religion upon your 
brow — the coronet by token of which God makes 
you a princess in His family, and an heir to the 
brightest glories, the sweetest pleasures, the no- 
blest privileges, and the highest honors of Hia 
kingdom. 



LETTERS TO YOUNG MARRIED 
PEOPLE. 



LETTERS TO YOUNG MAR- 
RIED PEOPLE. 

LETTER L 

The First Essential Duties of ilie Connubial Relation, 

let us walk the world, so that onr love 
Burn like a blessed beacon, beautiful, 
Upon the walls of life's surrounding dark I 

Geeald Massei.. 

"XT^OU are married, and it is for better or for 
JL worse. You are bound to one another as 
companions Tor life. Did it ever occur to you 
that this is a stupendous, a momentous fact? Did 
you ever think that since you came into the world, 
a precious lump of helpless life, there is no fact of 
your history which will so much affect your des- 
tiny as this? I do not propose to inquire into the 
motives which led you to this union. You may 



158 TITGOMB'S LETTERS. 

have come together like two streams, flowing nat- 
urally towards one point, and then mingling their 
waters with scarcely a ripple, to pass on together 
to the great ocean. You may have come together 
under the wild stress of passion, or the feeble at 
tractions of fancy, or the sordid compulsions of in 
terest, or by force of a love so pure that an angel 
would think himself in heaven while in its presence. 
But the time for considering the motives which 
have united you is past. You are married, for 
better or for worse. The word is spoken. The 
bond is sealed; and the only question now is — 
"how shall this union be made to contribute the 
most to your happiness and your best develop- 
ment ?" It is to answer, this question as well as I 
can, that I write this series of letters. 

You have but one life to live, and no amount of 
money, or influence, or fame, can pay you for a 
life of unhappiness. You cannot afford to be un- 
happy. You cannot afford to quarrel with one 
another. You cannot afford to cherish a single 
thought, to harbor a single desire, to gratify a sin 
gie passion, nor indulge a single selfish feeling that 
will tend to make this union anything but a source 
of happiness to you. So it becomes you, at start- 
ing, to have a perfect understanding with one an- 
other. It becomes you to resolve that you will be 
happy together, at any rate; or if you suffer, that it 
shall be from the same cause, and in perfect sym- 
pathy. You are not to let any human being step j 
between you, under any circumstances. Neither 



DUTIES OF CONNUBIAL RELATION. 159 

father nor mother, neither brother nor sister, 
neither friend nor neighbor, has -any right to inter- 
fere with your relations, so long, at least, as you 
are agreed. You twain are to be one flesh — iden- 
tified in objects, desires, sympathies, fortunes, 
positions— everything. You are to know no closer 
friend. Now I care not how pure and genuine 
may be the love which has brought you together, 
if you have any character at all, you will find that 
this perfect union cannot be effected without com- 
promises. Human character, by a wise provision 
of Providence, is infinitely varied, and there are 
not two individuals in existence so entirely alike in 
their tastes, habits of thought, and natural apti- 
tudes, that they can keep step with one another 
over all the rough places in the path of life. So 
there must be a bending to one another. I suppose 
the brides are few who have not wept once over the 
hasty words of a husband not six months married; 
and I suppose there are few husbands who, in the 
early part of their married life, have not felt that 
perhaps their choice was not a wise one. 

Breaches of harmony will occur between imper- 
fect men and women; but all bad results may be 
avoided by a resolution, well kept on both sides, to 
ask each other's pardon for every offence — for the 
hasty word, the peevish complaint, the unshared 
pleasure — everything that awakens an unpleasant 
thought, or wounds a sensibility. This reparation 
must be made at once; and if you have a frank 
and worthy nature, a quarrel is impossible. My 



160 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

opinion is that ninety-nine one-hundredths of the 
imhappiness in the connubial relation, is the abso- 
lute fault, and not primarily the misfortune, of 
the parties. You can be happy together if you 
will; but the agreement to be happy must be mu- 
tual. The compromise cannot be all on one side. 
It is a mulish pride in men, and a sensitive will in 
women, that make the principal difficulty in all 
unhappy cases. I say to every man and woman, 
if you have done anything which has displeased 
your companion, beg her or his pardon, whether 
you are intentionally guilty or not. It is the 
cheapest and quickest way to settle the business. ■ 
One confession makes way for another, and the 
matter is closed— closed, most probably, with the 
very sweetest kiss of the season. 

Be frank with one another. Many |t husband 
and wife go on from year to year with thoughts in 
their hearts, that they hesitate to reveal to one 
another. If you have anything in your mind con- 
cerning your companion that troubles you, out 
with it. Do not brood over it. Perhaps it can ba 
explained on the spot, and the matter for ever 
put to rest. Draw } T our souls closer and closer to- 
gether, from year to year. Get all obstacles out of 
the way. Just as soon as one arises, attend to it, 
and get rid of it. At last, they will all disappear. 
You will become wonted to one another's habits 
and frames of mind and peculiarities of disposition ; 
and love, respect, and charity will take care of t\u\ 
rest. 



DUTIES OF CONNUBIAL RELATION. 161 

I insist on this, because it is the very first essen- 
tial thing. I insist on it because I believe that if 
there be sufficient affinity between two persons to 
bring them together, and to lead them to unite 
their lives, it is their fault if they fail to live hap- 
pily, and still more and more happily as the years 
advance. I will go so far as to say that I believe 
there are few women with whom a kind, sensible 
man may not live happily, if he be so disposed; 
and I know that woman is more plastic in her na- 
ture, and more susceptible to love than man. So 
when I hear of unhappy matches, I know that 
somebody is to blame. 

/This intimate association of husband and wife- 
nay, this identity— can never be preserved while 
either is blabbing of the other. A man w r ho tells 
his neighbor that his wife is extravagant, that she 
is wasteful, that he never finds her home, that she 
will never go out with him, or that she is or does 
anything which he desires her not to be or do, does 
a shameful thing, and a cruel thing, besides mak- 
ing a fool of himself. A woman who bruits her 
husband's faults, who tells the neighbors how much 
he seeks the society of other women, how much 
he spends for cigars, how late he is out at night, 
how lazy he is, how little he cares for what inter- 
ests her, how stingy he is with his money, and all 
that sort of thing, sins against herself, and consents, 
or voluntarily enlists, to publish that which is essen- 
tially her own shame. A husband and wife have 
no business to tell one another's faults to anybody 



162 TITCOMBS LETTERS, 

but to one another. They cannot do it -without 
shame. Their grievances are to be settled in pri- 
vate, between themselves; and in all public places, 
and among friends, they are to preserve towards 
one another that nice consideration and entire re- 
spectfulness which their relation enjoins. For they 
are one in the law; and for a man or woman to 
publish the truth, that they are not one in fact, 
is to acknowledge that they are living in the re- 
lation of an unwilling lover and a compulsory mis- 
tress. A"** 

A great deal of evil might be prevented between 
you if you would allow your affection to give itself 
natural expression. I know of husbands so proud 
and stiff and surly that they never have a lass or a 
caress, or a fond word for their wives whom they 
really love. I know such husbands who have 
most lovable wives — wives to whom a single tender 
demonstration, that shall tell to their hearts how 
inexpressibly pleasant their faces and their society 
are, and how fondly they are loved, would be bet- 
ter than untold gold — wives, to whom caresses are 
sweeter than manna, and fond words more musical 
than robin-songs in the rain. They go through 
life starving for them — bearing buds of happiness 
upon their bosoms that must be kissed into bloom, 
or wither and fall. Yet the cast-iron husband goes 
about his business without even a courteous ' ' good 
morning," eats his meals with immense regularity, 
provides for his family exemplariiy, imagines that 
he is an excellent husband, and entertains a pro- 



DUTIES OF CONNUBIAL RELATION 163 

found contempt for silly people who are fond of 
one another. 

Heaven be thanked that there are some in the 
world to whose hearts the barnacles will not cling ! 
Heaven be thanked for the young old boys and the 
young old girls — boys and girls for ever — who, 
until the evening of life falls upon them, inter- 
change the sweet caresses that call back the days 
of courtship and early marriage ! j Thank Heaven 
that my wife can never grow old; tnat so long as a 
lock adorns her temples, brown or grey, my ringer 
shall toy with it; that so long as I can sit there 
shall be a place for her on my'knee; and that so 
long as I can whisper and she can hear, she shall 
know by fond confession that hei 4 soul is next to 
mine — linked to mine — mine ! 

I wish in this , letter to impress upon you the 
idea which few married people' apparently tho- 
roughly comprehend, that you — husband and wife — 
are one, — that you have no separate interests, that 
you can have no separate positions in society, that 
you should desire none, and that it is within your 
ability, and is most imperatively your duty to be 
happy together. In order to be what you should 
be to each other, and in order to be happy your- 
•selves — in your own hearts — you should begin 
right. -'You should be willing at all times to bear 
one another's burdens; and in fact, I know of no 
better rule for accomplishing the end I seek for 
you than by your constantly studying and minis- 
tering to the happiness of each other. Selfishness 



164 TITC0MR8 LETTERS. 

is the bane of all life, and especially of married 
life; and if a husband and wife devote themselves 
to one another's happiness, relinquishing their own 
selfish gratification for that end, the task is accom- 
plished — the secret solved. /The path of such a 
pair is paved with gold. Their life is a song of 
praise. All good angels are about them, bearing 
consolations for every sorrow, antidotes for every 
bane, rewards for every labor, and strength for 
every trial. That is essential marriage; and, as 
Paul Dombey said when Mrs. Pipchin told him 
there was nobody else like her, "that is a very 
good thing." 

I suppose there is a modicum of romance in 
most natures, and that if it gather about any 
event, it is that of marriage. Most people mar- 
ry ideals. There is more or less of fictitious and 
fallacious glory resting upon the head of every 
bride, which the inchoate husband sees and be- 
lieves in. Both men and women manufacture per- 
fections in their mates by a happy process of their 
imaginations, and then marry them. This of 
course, wears away. By the time the husband has 
seen his wife eat heartily of pork and beans, and, 
with her hair frizzled, and her oldest dress on, full 
of the enterprise of overhauling things, he sees 
that she belongs to the same race as himself. And 
she, when her husband gets up cross in the morn- 
ing, and undertakes to shave himself with cold 
water and a dull razor, while his suspenders dan- 
gle at his heels, begins to see that man is a very 



DUTIES OF CONNUBIAL RELATION. 165 

prosaic animal. In other words, there is such a 
thing as a honeymoon, of longer or shorter dura- 
tion; and while the moonshine lasts, the radiance 
of the seventh heaven cannot compare with it. It 
is a very delicious little delirium — a febrile men-l$) 
tal disease — which, like measles, never comes again. 

Y/hen the honeymoon passes away, setting be- 
hind dull mountains, or dipping silently into the 
stormy sea of life, the trying hour of married life 
has come. Between the parties, there are no more 
illusions. The feverish desire of possession is 
gone — vanished into gratification — and all excite- 
ment has receded. Then begins, or should begin, 
seriously, the business of adaptation. If they find 
that they do not love one another as they thought 
they did, they should conscientiously and earnestly 
foster and strengthen every bond of attachment 
which exists. They should double their assiduous 
attentions to one another, and be jealous of every- 
thing which tends in the slightest degree to sepa- 
rate them. Life is too precious to be thrown away 
in secret regrets or open differences. 

I say to any married pair, from whom the ro- 
mance of life has fled, and who are discontented in 
the slightest degree with their condition and rela- 
tions, begin this work of reconciliation before you 
are a day older. Eenew the attentions of earlier 
days. Draw your hearts closer together. Talk the 
thing all over. Acknowledge your faults to one 
another, and determine that henceforth you will be 
all in all to each other; and, my word for it, you 



166 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

shall find in your relation the sweetest joy earth 
has for you. There is no other way for you to do. 
If you are unhappy at home, you must be unhappy 
abroad. The man or woman who has settled 
down upon the conviction that he or she is at- 
tached for life to an uncongenial yoke-fellow, and 
that there is no way to escape, has lost lif e. There 
is no effort too costly to be made which can re- 
store to its setting upon theii bosoms the missing 
pearL 






I ImI 



LETTER TL 
Special Duties of the Husband. 

He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet 
hated his own flesh; but nourished and cherished it, even as the 
Lord the church, 

St. Paul. 

YOUXG husband, this letter is for you. Have 
you an idea that you have anything like a 
just comprehension of the nature of the being 
whom God has given you for a companion? If 
you have, you labor under a veiy serious mistake. 
You may live with her until, amid grey heirs and 
grandchildren, you celebrate your golden wedding, 
and then know but a tithe of her strength and 
tenderness. I believe in such a thing as sex of 
soul. A woman's happiness flows to her from 
sources and through channels, different from those 
which give origin and conduct to the happiness of 
man, and, in a measure, will continue to do so for 
ever. Her faculties bend their exercise towards 
different issues; her social and spiritual natures de- 
mand a different aliment. What will satisfy you will 



168 TITCOMB'S LETTEliS. 

not satisfy her. That which most interests you is not 
that in which her soul rinds its most grateful exer- 
cise. Her love for you may bring her intimately 
into sympathy with your pursuits, through all their 
wide range, from a hotly driven political contest to 
breaking up a piece of wild land, or even to the 
cultivation of an unthrifty whisker; but it will 
only be because they interest the man she loves 
above all others. She is actuated by motives that 
do not affect you at all, or not to the extent that 
they do her. ( If she be led into sin, you renounce 
and denounce her as a thing unclean: yet, through 
all your debauchery, your untruth to her, your 
beastly drunkenness, your dishonor, your misfor- 
tune, she will cling to you. / There is in her heart 
a depth of tenderness of which neither you nor 
she herself has any conception. Only the circum- 
stances and exigencies of life wiU reveal it ; and 
this is why a healthy female soul is always fresh 
and new. Longfellow, in his " Spanish Student," 
gives a hint of this — and a pretty deep one—in the 
language he puts into the mouth of Preciosa's 
lover : — ■ *> 



"What most I prize in woman 
Is her affections, not her intellect. 
The intellect is finite ; but the affections 
Are infinite, and cannot be exhausted." 

" The world of the affections is thy world;— 
Not that of man's ambition. /' In that stillness, 
Which most becomes a woman, calm and holj, 



SPECIAL DUTIES OF THE HUSBAND. 169 

Thou sittest by the fireside of the heart, 
Feeding its flame." 

" The affections are infinite, and cannot be ex- 
hausted;" and it is through her affections, and 
through the deepest of all affections, that happi- 
ness comes to the bosom of your wife. The world 
may pile its honors upon you until your brain goes 
wild with delirious excitement; wealth may pour 
into your coffers through long years of prosperity; 
you may enjoy the fairest rewards of enterprise 
and excellence; but if all these things are won by 
depriving your wife of your society — by driving 
her out of your thoughts, and by interfering with 
the constant sympathetic communion of your 
heart with hers, she cannot but feel that what en- 
riches you impoverishes her, and that your gain, 
whatever it may be, is at her expense. She may 
enjoy your reputation and your wealth, your suc- 
cesses and good fortunes, but you and your 
society are things that are infinitely more precious 
to her. She depends upon you, naturally and by 
force of circumstances. Friends may crowd 
around her: but if you come not, she is not sat- 
isfied. ..She may have spread before her a thou- 
sand delicacies; but if they are unshared with you, 
she would exchange them all for an orange which 
you bring home to her as an evidence that you 
have thought of her. The dress you selected 
when in the city is the dearest, though she may 
acknowledge to herself that she would have chosen 



170 TITCOMES LETTERS. 

different colors and material. In short, it is from 
your heart, and the world coming through your 
heart, that she draws that sustenance and support 
which her deepest nature craves. 

Now, how are you dealing by this wife of yours ?. 
Do you say that you have all you can attend to in 
your business, and that she must look out for her- 
self? Do you forget that she lives in the house, 
away from the excitements of the world winch so 
much interest you, and that the very sweetest ex- 
citement of the day is that which throws the 
warm blood in her heart into eddies as she hears 
your step at the door? Do you forget that she has 
no pleasure in public places unless you are at her 
side? Are you unmindful that she has no such 
pleasant walks as those which she takes with her 
hand upon your arm? Do you ignore the fact that 
she has a claim upon your time? Do you fail to 
remember that you took her out of a pleasant fam- 
ily circle, away from the associations of her child- 
hood, and that she has no society in all the wide 
world which she prizes so highly as yours? Do 
you forget that you owe your first duty to her, and 
that you have no right to give to society, or to 
your own pleasure, the time which necessarily in- 
volves neglect of her? To come to a practical 
point— is it one of the aims of your life to give to 
your wife a portion of your time and society so 
that she shall not always be obliged to sit alone, 
and go out alone? 

There are Bome poor specimens of your ses in 



SPECIAL DUTIES OF THE HUSBAND. 17* 

the world who not only do not feel that their wives 
have any special claim on their consideration and 
their time, but who take the occasion, when in the 
of their wives, to make themselves gen- 
erally despicable. I know a man whose appear- 
ance when in society, or mingling hi the common 
- of business, has all the blandness and fra- 
se of newly mown hay. He touches his hat to 
the ladies whom he meets in the street with a grace 
which a D'Orsay would honor with admiration, 
and gives them a smile as genial and radiant as a 
harvest moon. He bears with him all the polish 
and grace of a gentleman. The concentrated vir- 
tues of all the lubricating oils could not add to the 
ease of his manners. People cannot imagine how 
such a man could be anything but the best of hus- 
bands; but he is not any such thing. If I were 
a Jew, and not particularly fond of bacon, I should 
say that he is a hog in his own house. He is, 
there, domineering, peevish, exacting, and hateful. 
I have never known him to speak an affectionate or 
pleasant word to the best of wives. Nothing is 
out of place in the house for which she is not re- 
proached in fretful and insulting language. Noth- 
ing goes wrong out of doors for which he does not 
take revenge, or show his spite, by finding fault 
with the companion of his life. He criticises her 
cooking and her personal appearance, and, in 
short, lets off upon her wounded but patient ear all 
the foul accumulations of his miserable nature and 
most contemptible disposition* Although some 



172 TITGOMFS LETTERS. 

powerful impressions received in early life Lave in- 
duced me to oppose corporeal punishment on prin- 
ciple, I have sometimes wondered whether I 
should be entirely inconsolable if he should, some 
time, be cowhided, lacked, cuffed, maimed, and 
otherwise shamefully entreated. 

But this is an extreme case, you say. Well, it 
ought to be; but will you just stop for a moment, 
and ask yourself where it is that .you show the 
worst side of your nature? "Where is it that you 
feel at the greatest liberty to exhibit your spleen, 
to give way to' your fretfulness, to speak harsh 
words, to make hateful little speeches that are 
contemptible from their unprovoked bitterness? 
(Is it among your fellows, and in the society of 
other ladies, that you take occasion to say your 
meanest things? No, sir! You go home to your 
wife; you go home from those who care no more 
for you than they do for a thousand others, to the 
woman whom in the presence of God and men 
you have promised to love and cherish above all 
others; to the woman who loves you, and who re- 
gards you as better than all else earthly; to a wo- 
man who is unprotected save by you, and wholly 
unprotected from you, and spit your sjoleen into 
her ear, and say things to her which, if any one 
else were to say, would secure him a well deserved 
caning. Are you not ashamed of this? You say 
things to her which you would not dare say to any 
other lady, however much you might be provoked, 
You say them — O courageous Mend! because no- 



SPECIAL DUTI1 HUSBAND. 173 

iy has the right to cowhide you for it. Isn't 
md manly? As the good mothers of us 
have told us a thou " don't you nev- 

er let* me hear of your doing that again." It isn't 
pre: It is ineffably wicked and dastardly. 

. husbands and wives may entertain perfect 
Apathy, there should be the closest confidence 
between them. I need not tell the wife to give 
her husband the most perfect confidence in ah af- 
fairs. She does this naturally, if her husband do ^ 
repulse her. But you. young husband, do not 
3 your wife your confidence — you do not make 
her your confidante — you have an idea that your 
business is not your wife's business. So you keep 
jes — everyt hin g — to your- 
:. Numberless disturbances of married life bo- 
gin exactly at this point. Tour wife receives the 
money for her personal expenses, and for the ex- 
penses of the house, at your hands. You do not 
her how hardly it has been won; with how 
much difficulty you have contrived to get it into 
your purse, and how necessary it is for her to be 
economical You often deceive her, out of genu- 
love for her, into the belief that you are really 
doin you wonder the woman 

can d dollars for a hat and thirty doll : 

for a cloak. Pe: ;"__:".;- her for her ex- 

:.nd so, in course of time, she comes to 
ok you have got an: :u, 

and : iraily ret :. She will not 

led in her expenditures. She dresses no 



174 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

better than her neighbors. So you run your fin- 
gers through your hair, and sigh over the fact that 
you have got an extravagant wife, while she, in 
turn, wonders how it is possible for a loving hus- 
band to be so selfish and stingy. 

Thus for life, perhaps, a hostility of feeling and 
interest is established, which might all have been 
prevented by a free and full statement of your cir- 
cumstances. This would interest her in, and 
identify her with, ail your trials. It is entirely ra- 
tional and right that your wife should understand 
the basis of all your requirements of her; and, 
when she does this, the chances are that she will 
not only be economical herself, but will point out 
leakages in your prosperity for which you are re- 
sponsible rather than herself. It is possible that 
you have a companion as much troubled by figures 
as the child- wife, Dora, was. If so, I am sorry for 
yen; but, if so, very luckily she will do what you 
require of her without a reason. 

I understand perfectly the desire of a young and 
sensitive husband to give his wife all the money 
she wants. You would fulfil her wishes in all 
things; especially would you allow her those means 
that will enable her to gratify her tastes in dress 
and household equipage. You dislike to appear 
unthrifty, inefficient, or mean, and you are willing 
to sacrifice much, that no care, no small economies, 
no apprehension of coming evil, should cloud the 
brow of the one you love. "^"Well, I honor this 
feehng, for it has its birth in a sensitive, manly 



SPECIAL DUTIES OF TILE HUSBAND. 175 

pridejjbut it may go too far — very much too far 
It lias carried many a man straight into the open 
throat of bankruptcy, and rained both husband 
and wife for life. No, you must tell her all about 
it. She must know what your objects and projects 
are. She must know what your income is, and the 
amount of your annual expenses. Then, if she be 
a good wife, and worthy of a good husband, she : 
will become more thoroughly your partner, and 
"cut her garment according to the cloth." The 
interest which you thus secure from her in your 
business affairs, will be the greatest possible com- 
fort to you. She will enjoy all your successes, for 
they become her own. She will sympathize in all 
your trials, and you will find great consolation in 
feeling that there is one heart in the world that un- 
derstands you. 

And this matter of confidence between you and 
your wife must be carried into everything, for she 
is your life partner — your next soul. There is no 
way by which she can understand fully her rela- 
tions to the community and its various interests, 
save by understanding your own. So I say in 
closing, that to your wife you owe a reasonable 
portion of your time and society, the very choicest 
side of your nature and character when in her so- 
ciety, and your fullest confidence in all the affairs 
connected with your business, your ambitions, 
your hopes, and your fears. In the fierce conflicts 
of life you will find abundant recompense for all 
this. Your wife will soften your resentments, as- 



176 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

swage your disappointments, pour balm upon your 
wounded spirit, and harmonize and soften you. 
At the same time, the exercise of heart and soul 
which this will giye her, will make her p ~»obler, 
freer, better woman. It will give her fgreater 
breadth and strength of mind, and deepen her 
sensibilities. To a pair thus living and acting, 
may well be applied a couplet which occurs in that 
charming picture painted by Pinckney, of the In- 
dian husband and his pale-faced wife:— 

" She humanizes him, and he - 
Educates her to liberty." 



LETTER in. 
Special Duties of the Wife. 

And when the King's decree which he shall make shall be pub- 
lished throughout all his empire (for it is great), all the wives shall 
give to their husbands honor, both to great and small 

Book of Est h ktj. 

Teach the young women to be sober, to love their husbands, to 
] rir children, to be discreet, keepers at home, good, obedient 
dp own husbands. 

St. Paui- 

YOTTXG wife, I talked to your husband in my 
letter, and now I address you. I told 
him that you have a claim upon his time and society. 
There are qualifications of this claim which con- 
cern you particularly, and so I speak to you about 
them. Your husband labors all day — every day — 
and during the waking hours, between the conclu- 
sion of his labor at night and its commencement in 
the morning, he must have recreation of some 
kind; and here comes in your duty. Ii you do 
not make his home pleasant, so that the fulfilment 
of his dur -hall be a sweet pleasure to him, 

:.nnot hope for much of his company. What 



$ 



178 TITCOM&S LETTERS. 

his nature craves it will have — must have. He 
cannot be a slave all the time — a slave to his work 
by day and a slave to you by night. He must have 
hours of freedom; and happy are you if, of his own 
choice, he take the enjoyment you offer in the 
place of anything which the outside world has to 
give. I suppose there are few men who, when 
their work is over, and their supper eaten, do not 
have a desire to "go down town to meet a man," or jfe** 
visit " the post-office. " There is a natural desire 
in every heart to have, every day, an hour of social 
freedom — a few minutes, at least, of walk in the 
open air and contact with the minds of other men. 
This is entirely a natural and necessary thing ; 
and you should encourage rather than seek to 
prevent it unless your husband is inclined to 
visit bad places, and associate with bad compan- 
ions. 

Precisely here is a dangerous point for both hus- 
band and wife. The wife has been alone during 
the day, and thinks that her husband ought to 
spend the whole evening with her. The husband 
has been confined to his labor, and longs for an 
hour of freedom, in whatever direction his feet 
may choose to wander. Perhaps the wife thinks 
he has no business to wander at all, and that his 
custom is to wander too widely and too long. She 
complains, and becomes exacting. She cannot 
bear to have her husband out of her sight for a 
moment, after he quits his work. Now, if there 
T)e anything in all this world that will make a bus- 



SPECIAL DUTIES OF THE WIFE. 179 

baud hate his wife, it is a constant attempt on her 
part to monopolize all his leisure time and all his 
society, to curtail his freedom, and a tendency to 
be forever fretting his ears with the statement 
that "she is nothing, of course," that he " does not 
care anything about her," and that he dislikes his 
home. Treatment like this will just as certainly 
rouse all the perverseness in a man's nature as a 
spark will ignite gunpowder. Injustice and incon- 
siderateness will not go down, especially when ad- 
ministered by man's companion. He knows that 
he loves his home, and that he needs and has a 
right to a certain amount of his time away from 
home ; and if he be treated as if he possessed no 
such necessity and right, he will soon learn to bo 
ail that his wife represented him to be. I tell you 
that a man wants very careful handling. You 
must remember that he can owe no duty to you 
which does not involve a duty from you. You have 
the charge of the house, and if you expect him to 
spend a portion, or all of his evening in it, you 
must make it attractive. If you expect a man, as a 
matter of duty, to give any considerable amount of 
time to your society, daily, through a long series of 
years, you are to see that that society is worth 
something to him. Where are your accomplish- 
ments ? "Where are your books ? Where are your 
subjects of conversation ? \ 

But let us take up this question separately ; how 
shall a wife make her home pleasant and her society- 
attractive ? This is a short question, but a full 



180 TITCOMFS LETTERS. 

answer would make a book. I can only touch a 
few points. In the first place, she should never 
indulge in fault-finding. If a man has learned to 
expect that he will invariably be found fault with 
by his wife, on his return home, and that the bur- 
den of her words will be complaint, he has abso- 
lutely no pleasure to anticipate and none to enjoy. 
There is but one alternative for a husband in such 
a case: either to steel himself against complaints, 
or be harrowed up by them and made snappish and 
waspish. They never produce a good effect, under 
any circumstances whatever. There should always 
be a pleasant word and look ready for him who re- 
turns from the toils of the day, wearied with earn- 
ing the necessaries of the family. If a pretty pair 
of slippers He before the fire, ready for his feet, so 
much the better. 

Then, again, the desire to be pleasing in person 
should never leave a wife for a day. The husband 
who comes home at night, and finds his wife 
dressed to receive him, — dressed neatly and taste- 
fully, because she wishes to be pleasant to his eye, 
cannot, unless he be a brute, neglect her, or slight 
her graceful pains-taking. It is a compliment to 
him. It displays a desire to maintain the charms 
that first attracted him, and to keep intact the sil- 
ken bouds which her tasteful girlhood had fastened 
to his fancy. 

I have seen things managed very differently from 
this. / 1 have known an undressed head of " horrid 
hair " worn all day long, because nobody but the 



SPECIAL DUTIES oJt' TiIE Will 181 

husband would see it. I have seen bjL^Jkfast 
s with .-agar plantations on them of ver 

lisagreeable stickiness. 

In short. I have seen slatterns, whose kiss would 

a. and \* ::, I ha d them 

with neither collar nor zone, — with a person which 
did n js a single charm to a husband with 

his eyes open, and in his light mind, 
wrong, young wife, for there is no being in this 
world for whom it is so much for your inter 
-. as for your husband. J Your happine- 
j^ends much on your retaining, not only the esteem 
of your husband, but his admiration. He should 
see no greater neatness and no more taste in mate- 
rial and htness, in any woman's dress, than in yours; 
and there is no individual in the world I 
whom you should always appear with more thorough 
tidiness of person than your husband. I: 
are careless in this particular, you absol 
throw away some of the strongest and most charm- 
ing miiuences which you possess. "What is true of 
your person is also true of your house. Ii' 
house be disorderly, if dust cover the table, and 
invite the critical hnger to write your proper I 
if the furniture look as if it w e re tossed in: 
room from a cart : if your table-cloth have a more 
intimate acquaintance with gravy than with 
rom cellar to garret there be no order, d 
blame a husband for not wanting to sit down and 
ppend his evening with you '? I should blame him, 



182 TITCOMB'S LETTEES. 

of course, on general principles, but, as all men 
are not so sensible as I am, I should charitably en- 
tertain all proper excuses. 

Still again, have you anything to talk about — 
anything better than scandal — with which to inter 
est and refresh his weary mind ?— I believe in the 
interchange of caresses, as I have told you before, 
but kisses are only the spice of life. You cannot 
always sit on year husband's knee, for, in the first 
place, it would tire hini, and in the second place, 
he would get sick of it. You should be one with 
your husband, but never in the shape of a parasite. 
He should be able to see growth in your soul, inde- 
pendent of him ; and whenever he truly feels that 
he has received from you a stimulus to progress and 
goodness, you have refreshed him, and made a 
great advance into his heart. 

, He should see that you really have a strong de- 
sire to make him happy, and to retain forever the 
warmest place in his respect, his admiration, and 
his affection. Enter into all his plans with inter- 
est. Sweeten all his troubles with your sympathy. 
Make him feel that there is one ear always open to 
the revelation of his experiences, that there is one 
heart that never misconstrues him, that there is one 
refuge for him in all circumstances; and that in all 
weariness of body and soul, there is one warm pil- 
low T for his head, beneath which a heart is beating 
with the same unvarying truth and affection, 
through all gladness and sadness, as the faithful 
chronometer suffers no perturbation of its rhythm 



SPECIAL DUTIES OF THE WIFE. 183 

b y shine or shower. A husband who. has sach a 
wife as. this, has little temptation to spend much 
time away from home. He cannot stay away long at a 
time. He may "meet a man," but the man will 
not long detain him from his wife. He may go to 
4 'the post-office,'/ but he will not call upon a 
friend's wife on the way. J He can do better. The 
great danger is that he will love his home too well 
— that he will neither be willing ix have you visit 
your aunts and cousins, nor, without a groan, ac- 
cept an invitation to tea at your neighbor's. A 

But I leave this special point, to which I have 
devoted my space somewhat improvidently. There 
is one relation which you bear to your husband, or 
one aspect of your relation to him, to which I have 
not alluded sufficiently. You are not only the wife 
of his bosom — the object of his affections, but you 
have a business relation with him — you are his 
helpmate. To a very great extent you are depen- 
dent upon him, but you are also his assistant, — 
bound to use his money economically, and to aid, 
so far as you can, in saving and accumulating it. 
The woman who feels that she has a right to spend 
every cent that "the old man " allows her, and that 
all she gets out of him is hers to lavish upon her van- 
ities, takes a veiy low view of her relations to him. 
It is simply the view of a mistress, and is utterly 
dishonorable — utterly mercenary. The money 
which he j>uts into your hand endows you simply 
with a stewardship. You have no right to waste 
it, or to part with it, for anything but such values 



184 TITCOMFS LETTERS. 

as are consistent with his means. You have con- 
sented to be the partner of his life, and you have 
no more right to squander his money than his busi- 
ness partner has. It is your duty to husband it ; 
and happy are you if your companion has such 
confidence in your faithfulness to him and his in- 
terest, that he puts money into your hand always 
willingly, believing that it will be parted with ju- 
diciously, and with discreet and conscientious re- 
gard to his means and abilities. If your husband 
has no confidence in your economy and discretion, 
and consequently stints you, and absolutely feels 
obliged to place you in the position of a favorite 
dependent and pensioner — a plaything or a house- 
keeper for whom he has got to pay — you are not 
happy by any means. 

You can do very much in your character of help- 
mate to lighten your husband's cares, and relieve 
him from anxieties. If he finds you looking close- 
ly after his interests, buying economically the food 
for his table, and never wastefuliy sacrificing 
your old dresses in consequence of your thirst for 
new, always counting the cost of every object 
which you may desire, you relieve his mind from a 
load of care which no man can carry without em- 
barrassment. A man who feels that there is in 
his own house a leak which will absorb all he may 
earn, be that little or much, and that he has got to 
suffer it, and suffer from it, or institute restrictions 
that will probably make him appear mean in the 
eyes of his wife (wasteful wives are very apt to 



SPECIAL DUTIES OF TEE WIFE. 185 

have mean husbands), the great stimulus and 
encouragement of his industry are taken away from 
him. 

The full appreciation of your character, as your 
husband's helpmate, depends upon the thorough 
identification of yourself with him. Of this I 
have talked before, and call it up again for the pur- 
pose of showing you that there is absolutely no as- 
pect of your relation to him which can be consid- 
ered legitimate and complete that does not inyolye 
his identification. It is an equal thing. You are 
interested in your husband's expenditures; and he 
is interested in yours. You have cast in your lot 
together — your whole lot; and he has no more right 
to expend his money in such a way as to embarrass 
you, and deprive you of what you need, than you 
have to squander the means which he places at 
your disposal. It is a partnership concern, and if 
you succeed in managing your department of it in 
such a way as to secure your husband's confidence, 
fairly consideiing the cost of every cent to him, 
he will feel that he is appreciated, honored, and 
loved. Yeiy likely he will understand this better 
than tasteful comforts and tender demonstrations 
of a fighter nature— demonstrations that involve no 
self-deniaL 



LETTER IV. 

The Rearing of Children. 

Once thou wert hidden in her painful side, 

A boon unknown, a mystery and a fear; 

Strange pangs she bore for thee; but He whose name 

Is everlasting Love hath healed her pain ; 

And paid her suffering hours with living joy. 

Henry Alfokd. 

Hail, wedded Love ! mysterious law; true source 
Of human offspring ! 

Melton. 

"Y theory of life is that it is a school of men- 
JLV-L tal and moral development — that God in- 
tended that each soul should pass under a series 
of influences, whose office it should be to evolve all 
its faculties, and soften and harmonize them. To 
this end, he has laid upon each a sweet necessity 
to adopt the ordinances he has contrived. When 
I speak of necessity, I do not mean compulsion, 
save in a limited sense — compulsion entirely consist-' 
ent with individual election. Thus I believe that 
there is a very material portion of mental and mor- 
al development which cannot be achieved out of 



THE BEARING OF C11ILLT.ES. 187 

tlie marriage relation; and, to bring men and wo* 

men into this relation, He has given them the sen- 
timent of love, and the desire of mutual personal 
possession. This sentiment and desire are made 
so strong that they may hardly be resisted, so that 
all shall choose to be joined in conjugal relations. 
Thus the strong are softened by the weak, and the 
weak are invigorated by the strong; and the influ- 
ences of men and women upon each other become 
the most powerful agencies for their mutual har- 
monious growth. But this is not all. When a 
pair have become united in wedlock, there arises 
in each healthy heart a desire for offspring. No- 
thing is more natural than this desire, and nothing 
more imperative. Its germ is seen far back in child- 
hood. The boy's love of pets is but a manifesta- 
tion of the primary outreachings of this desire, 
which fasten at first upon the only possible ob- 
jects; and there probably never lived a little girl 
that did not love her doll beyond all other play- 
things. She takes it first, and retains it the longest 
of any. 

This brings me to the subject of children, as le- 
gitimately something to be talked about in these 
letters. The having and the rearing of children 
form one of God's ordinances for making you what 
you should be — what He wishes you to be. They 
are as necessary to you as you are to them. You 
can no more reach the highest and most harmoni- 
ous development of which you are capable without 
children, than you can develop a muscle without 



188 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

exercise. Without them, one of the most beauti- 
ful regions of your nature must forever remain 
without appropriate and direct culture. The of- 
fices of children in the culture of their parents are 
manifold. In the first place, they are a conserva- 
tive and regulating force. A pair living together 
without children naturally become selfish. A pair 
un watched by innocent eyes are often thrown off 
i their guard in their language towards, and treat- 
ment of each other. They lose one great stimu- 
lus to industry, and do not possess that which is, 
perhaps, the strongest bond, under all the circum- 
stances of life, which can bind husband and wife 
together. There can be no true development of 
heart and mind where pure selfishness is the pre- 
dominant principle; so God ordains that in each 
house there shall be little ones, more precious than 
all else, who shall engage the sympathy, tax the 
efforts, and absorb the love of those who sustain 
to them the relation of parents. The law is irre- 
versible that our best individual progress in mental 
and moral good shall be attained by efforts devoted 
to others ; and in children, each parent finds the 
nearest objects of such devotion. And there 
is, perhaps, nothing which so tends to soften 
the heart, to develop the kindlier affections, 
and to unlock and chasten the sympathies of men, 
and women, as the children which sit around their 
table, and frolic upon their knees. 

When I see a man stop in the streets to comfort 
some weeping child, or to get a kiss from a pair of 



THE KEAMNG GF CHILDREN. 189 

juvenile lips, I know that lie has passed through a 
blessed experience with children. A helpless little 
head has been laid upon his shoulder, in some 
hushed and hallowed room where the great mys- 
tery of birth has been enacted. Some feeble, 
wailing boy, pressed to his breast, has been borne, 
night after night, with weary arms, back and 
forth in the dimly lighted chamber, while the 
mother caught her short half hours of rest. More 
likely still, some precious warbler, her eyes closed, 
her lips forever stilled, her golden curls parted 
away from her marble forehead, a white rose in 
her hand, has been laid in the grave, and the sod 
that covers her has been fertilized by his tears. 
Oh! there is something in loving dependent chil- 
dren, in tender care for them, and in losing 
them, even, which bestows upon the soul the most 
enriching of its experiences. They make us ten- 
der and sympathetic, and a thousand times reward us 
for ail we do for them. We cannot get along with- 
out them; you cannot get along without them. 
You cannot afford to do it. They are cheap at 
the price of pain and sickness, and care and toil. 

What do I mean by talk like this? What do I 
mean by the utterance of common-place like this? 
I mean simply to reveal some of the considerations 
upon which I condemn a great and growing vice 
among the young married people of this country 
— a vice which involves essential murder in many 
instances, and swells the profits of a thousand nos- 
trum venders. And what do I mean by this? I 



190 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

mean that in thousands of American homes chil- 
dren have come to be regarded either as nuis- 
ances or luxuries. I mean that, in these homes, to 
have children is deemed a great misfortune. They 
are the bugbear that frightens people away from 
the marriage relation, and threatens them when in 
it. I mean that men and women, more and more 
in this country, hug to themselves their selfish de- 
* lights, cherish their selfish ease, and consult their 
selfish convenience, without a consideration of their 
duties as men and women, and without a comprehen- 
sion of the fact that they can only find their 
highest enjoyment by obedience to the laws of 
God, natural and revealed. I mean that there are 
multitudes who envy those unblest with children, 
and congratulate them upon their poverty. I 
mean that there are husbands who grudge every 
charm lost by their wives in the duties and sacrifi- 
ces of maternity, and that there are wives who are 
made spiteful and angry by the interference of 
children with their indolent habits, their love of 
freedom and self-indulgence, and their vain pur- 
suits. I mean that the number is increasing of 
those who receive the choicest earthly blessings 
God can confer with ingratitude and wilful com- 
plainings. That is precisely what I mean; and I 
do not hesitate to say that it is all a very shabby 
and sinful thing, and that it is high time that those 
who are guilty were ashamed of it. 
/ A woman who, by cool and calculating choice, is 
/ no mother, and who congratulates herself that she 



TEE REARING OF CHILDREN. 191 

lias no "young ones " tied to her apron strings, is 
either very unfortunately organized, or she is es- 
sentially immoral. A man who can tip up his feet, 
over against his lonely wife, and thank his stars 
that he has no " squalling brats " around to bother 
him, is a brute. It is time that some one protest, 
and I hereby do protest, against one of the 
sins and shames of the age, — a sin which deadens 
the conscience, bestializes the affections, and 
ruins the health of the mistaken creatures who 
practise it, — which cuts the channel from one 
end of the land to the other of a broader 
Ganges than that which bubbles along its heath- 
enish bank with the expiring breath of infancy. 

There is growing up a cowardly disposition to 
shirk trouble and responsibility in this matter. 
"I don't feel competent to bring up a family of 
children." Who does ? It is a part of your ed- 
ucation to acquire competence for this work. 
" But I don't feel like assuming such a responsibil- 
ity." That responsibility is precisely what you 
need to keep you in the path you ought to walk 
in. " But I can't afford it." Are there two pairs 
of hands between you, and not sufficient patience, 
courage, and enterprise to do the duties of life ? 
11 But I am afraid that I should lose my children. 
They are liable to so many accidents that it would 
be very strange if I should be able to raise a fam- 
ily without losing one or two." The sweetest and 
truest couplet that the Queen's laureate ever wrote 
tella the story upon this point; — « 



192 UTOOMITS LETTERS. 

" 'Tis better to have loved and lost, 
Than never to have loved at all." 

Ask the father and the mother, weeping over 
the coffin of their first-born and only child, wheth- 
er they regret that the child was born. Ask them 
the same question in after years, when that little 
life has come to be a thread of gold run- 
ning through all their experiences. If they give an 
affirmative answer, I will be silent. No, my mar- 
ried friends — you who shrink from accepting the 
choicest privilege bestowed upon you — you are all 
wrong; and if you live, you will arrive at a period 
when you will see that there are rewards and pun- 
ishments attached to this thing. "What is to sus- 
tain you when, in old age — the charms of youth all 
past, desire extinguished, and the grasshopper a 
burden — you sit at your lonely board, and think of 
the strangers who are to enjoy the fruit of your 
most fruitless life? Who are to feed the deadening 
affections of your heart and keep life bright and 
desirable to its close, but the little ones whom 
you rear to manhood and womanhood? What is 
to reward you for the toils of life if you do not 
feel that you — your thoughts, your blood, your in- 
fluence — are to be continued into the future? Do 
you like the idea of having hirelings, or those who 
are anxious to get rid of you, about your dying bed? 
Is it not worth something to have a family of chil- 
dren whom you Lave reared, lingering about your 
grave, with tears on their cheeks and blessings on 



THE REARING OF CHILDREN. 1<J3 

tlieir lips — tears for a great loss, and blessings on 
the hallowed influence which has trained them in 
the path of duty, and directed them to life's no- 
blest ends? 

This is a subject which has not been tallied 
about much publicly, but it is a very serious thing 
with me, and it ought to be with you. I love the 
family life. I esteem a Christian family — the 
more numerous the better — one of the most beau- ' 
tiful subjects of contemplation the earth affords. 
A father, thoroughly chastened and warmed in all 
his affections, and a mother overflowing with love 
for the dear children God has given her, devoted 
to their welfare, and guiding them by her tender 
counsels, sitting at their board with the sprightly 
forms and bright eyes of childhood around the ta- 
ble, or all kneeling at the family altar, form a sight 
more nearly allied to heaven than any other which 
the world presents. Do you suppose such a father 
would be what he is but for his children? Do you 
believe such a mother would be the blessed thing 
she is but for the development which she receives 
in her maternal office? No, you know that both 
have been chastened, elevated, purified, made 
strong, and essentially glorified, by a relation as 
sanctifying as it is sacred. 

So I say, in closing, that you can never realize 
the very choicest and richest blessings that Heaven 
intends for you, in your relations as husband and 
wife, without children. Whom God deprives of 
these, He has other thought for, and I have nothing 



194 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

to say to them; but to the multitude, I say, give 
welcome to each new-comer whom God has lighted 
with a spark of His own divinity, to grow in glory 
till it shall outshine the star beneath which it en- 
tered existence, such greeting as you would give 
an angel. ( Clothe him in white, bear him to the 
bap tismal v font, rejoice over him as a testimonial 
-that God remembers you, and celebrate the day 
when he was given to your arms in such a manner 
that he shall know that it is a blessed thing to be 
born. Sing to him pleasant songs, and scatter 
roses upon his cradle.] " Of such is the kingdom 
of heaven," and in such the Saviour has given to 
you those to whose pure, simple, and innocent 
likeness he would have you conform your heart, 
You are to rear your boy to manhood, and educate 
him to be a man; and he, in turn, is to educate 
you to be a child, and protect your helpless years. 
It is an even thing, and a beautiful exhibition of 
that wonderful machinery by which all are made to 
bear equal burden in evolving the noblest life of 
the race. 



LETTER V. 
Separation — Family Relatives — Servants. 

Whatever tlie uplooking soul admires, 
Whate'er tlie senses' banquet be, 
Fatigues, at last, with vain desires, 
Or sickens by satiety. 

But, truly, my deliglit was more 
In her to whom I'm bound for aye 
Yesterday than the day before, 
And more to-day than yesterday 1 

The Axgel in the House. 

THEEE are so many subjects which call for 
notice in my letters to you, that one letter, 
at least, must be a piece of patchwork. I propose 
that this one shall bear such a character. 

It is doubtless a general experience that a hus- 
band and wife, after living together for a time, be- 
come in a measure tired of one another's company. 
Before marriage, they were essential to each other; 
after long months of intimacy, a sense of monotony 
creeps upon them, and a separation for a few 
weeks is regarded as desirable, or not to be regret- 
ted. The husband would like a little more free- 
dom; the wife, perhaps, pines for the associations 



196 TITCOMES LETTERS. 

of lier free and careless girlhood. When this feel- 
ing conies upon a married pair, the time for a 
temporary separation has arrived, and the quicker 
it is instituted the better. The object and end of 
it is to prove to both that they cannot be happy 
when separated. The first week will pass off very 
pleasantly; the second will find them longing for 
one another's society again; the third will burden 
the miiUs with tender epistles in which the romance 
and ardor of courtship will be revived; the fourth 
will convince the wife that she has the very dearest 
husband in the world, and the husband will carry 
his package of letters in his breast pocket and 
sigh; the fifth will find a day set for the greatly 
longed-for re-union, about which both will be 
thinking all the time; and the sixth will bring the 
wife home, with all her precious beauty and band- 
boxes; and such a meeting will take place as well 
might make an old observing bachelor commit 
suicide. Well, they have learned a lesson which 
they will remember as long as they shall live. It 
is proved to them that they cannot be happy apart, 
and that separation will always be a calamity. 

Various circumstances spring up in the course of 
life which seem to dictate a temporary separation, 
on the score of economy or profit. A man will 
desire to go into a distant city, for a sojourn of 
months and perhaps years, that he may buy and 
Bell and get profit. The wife may not go, as it 
would interfere with the profits. This is one case; 
and there may be a thousand others in which poli- 



SRPA1IA TIOX. 197 

cy dictates a like temporary separation. My coun- 
sel is to regard all such inducements for separation 
as temptations of the devil. It is morally degrading 
for a husband and wife to live apart from each 
other. It is the rupture of a sacred tie — the denial 
of a sacred pledge — the breaking up of a relation 
into which religion, affection and habits of thought 
and life have all become intimately interwoven, 
leaving both man and woman loosely floating 
among new influences, and freed from the re- 
straints to which their lives had become con- 
formed. 

Separation for the time being destroys the com- 
fort and withholds the rewards of married life. It 
is a long, dreary, monotonous, or anxious espisode, 
for which neither fame nor money can compensate. 
It is this, or worse; for, certainly, nothing can 
compensate for the acquisition of that indirTerence 
on either side which proves that separation is not a 
calamity. A broken bone, too long left without 
setting, can never again make a firm junction. 
SejDaration which shows that a pair cannot five 
apart is well; separation which proves that they 
is one of the worst things that can happen. There- 
fore I say to every man, that the circumstances 
should be most extraordinary which will leave him 
at liberty to break up his home, or justify him in 
iting from his wife. If you cannot take tb.9 
of your bosom with you, you are to believe, 
generally, that your plans have not the favor of 
Providence. 



198 UTCOMB'S LETTERS. 

It is the habit of some husbands and wives to 
have intimate friends whom they cherish and cor- 
respond with, independently. I have known very 
good husbands to carry on limited flirtations, with 
girls, to be the repositories of secrets belonging to 
such, and to act as their very agreeable next- 
friends. Very pleasant connexions are these, to a 
young husband, who has time to attend to them, 
but very dangerous in the long run./ Similar con- 
nexions on the other side of the house have made 
a great deal of difficulty since the world began.) 
They are very harmless things at first; but there 
is nothing but danger in the intimacy of a married 
heart with an unmarried one, unless there be other 
relationships which justify it. A man or a woman 
who, from the most innocent motives originally, 
plays with such an intimacy as this, is toying with a 
very dangerous instrument. It leads to the estab- 
lishment of secrets between husband and wife — it- 
self a bad thing — and too frequently leads to their 
estrangement, more or less pronounced. You 
should never write a letter, or give occasion for the 
receipt of one, which you are unwilling to show to 
your companion. Under none but extraordinaiy 
circumstances should you consent to receive a se- 
cret from a friend which he or she may be unwill- 
ing your companion should know. 

If you have friends, they should be the friends 
of your companion; and this should be carried out- 
side of the circle of your intimacies. You have no 
business with a friend who refuses to be your com- 



FAMH .75. 

m'a friend m ". 

>J1, TOUT com- 

You m come to 

i 
. . ~.-hile 

.ompanion m. - the same 

ife, who is willing : 
lis jh ---,-" d an -- - in : 
a lack of spirit 

temptible. A] wr \ wife acting thn ii - 

bis or her own flesh and You go 

toger.. :_r. :: n 

_d an in .ne is an insult : : . :_. :.'.- 

i i ma lei all ... _ im 

ken : your mutual re- 
ad friends, it is proper 
I speak ;: yow relati as tc yom respc 
blood con: 

_ bn sband 
married | on Ereque ntij the par- 

ad are brought into his family, 
and not wife I 

lances in which ii : im] ;Ie to 

with th ii you 

. : of reasoning 

is but 
fco pursB _ . o& 

ad's ] iie wii 1 the 

the i arents : I the hn£ 
are to receive and treat thei or own — 

a 



200 TITCOMFS LETTERS. 

willingly and affectionately. You are to learn to 
love and respect them, — to bear with their frail- 
ties, to comfort them in their passage to the tomb, 
to treat them in no sense as depen dents, and to 
make them feel that they are not only welcome to 
your kindly offices, but that they have aright to the 
home which they have with you. You are young, 
and they are old. It is for the honor of your com- 
panion that his or her parents have support at his 
or her hands, and what is your companion's honor 
is yours. Besides, this world is a world of com- 
pensations, more nicely adapted and more cer- 
tain than you know. The time will pass away, 
and the children now on your knee will have grown 
to manhood and womanhood, and will have chosen 
their companions, as their fathers and mothers 
chose theirs before them. The home which you 
now enjoy may be broken up. Your companion 
will be taken from you, and your only resort may 
be the home of your child. The treatment which 
you would wish to receive from your son's wife, 
or your daughter's husband, is precisely the treat- 
ment which you now owe to those who hold to 
you the relation which you will then sustain to 
them. 

The same rules which govern you in regard to 
the parents should extend to the circle of your other 
relatives. Of course, your ability to maintain depen- 
dents is a consideration; but I regard personal and 
family honor as most inseparably involved in this 
thing. A son or a daughter who, with the power 



FAMIL Y EEL A TIVES. 201 

of maintaining without impossible self-sacrifice a 
father and mother, allows them to finish their life 
in an aim-house, or to live on the charity of those 
upon whom they have no special claims, is a brute. 
There are a few such miserable creatures in the 
world, who ought to be hooted at and cut by all 
decent people. In a measure the same thing is 
true of all family relatives. It is a matter of per- 
sonal and family pride, as I have said. It is some- 
thing more than this. The poor we have always 
with us, and we owe a duty to them, unless we 
ourselves are equally poor; but when a man has 
poor relatives who must be dependent, more or 
less, upon some one, it is as if God's finger had 
kindly pointed out to him the very objects upon 
which his benefactions should be bestowed. 

I am aware that this is rather serious doctrine 
for some minds. I am aware that relatives are 
often proud as well as poor; that they will be de- 
pendent rather than labor; that they become in- 
sufferable drones and bores, and haunt your homes 
with a most offensive and vexatious presence. There 
ought to be some method of treating such, but I 
do not possess it. If you cannot make them use- 
ful, there are several ways of making them uncom- 
fortable which may be safely left to the invention 
and discretion of the suffering parties. My plea is 
for a thorough identification of family feeling and 
family pride between husband and wife. If it en- 
tail disagreeable and unjust burdens, through the 
laziness or extravagance of dependent relatives, it 



202 TIWOMT?S LETTEBS. 

is a misfortune; but misfortunes are incident to all 
relations. Better bear them than leave your mo- 
tives open to suspicion, or bring disgrace upon your 
family name. 

I cannot close .this letter better than by saying a 
word or two upon the subject of servants. The 
general proposition that the quality of the servant 
it ' dependent upon the quality of the mistress is a 
sound one. If a woman w T ho frets at and scolds 
her servants ever has a good servant, it is in spite 
of the treatment she receives. In order to be a 
good mistress, it is necessary to believe in a few 
fundamental truths, which may be briefly stated as 
follows: First, servants are human beings, and 
consequently have souls ; second, servants, having 
souls, are consequently controlled by the motives 
which address themselves to a common humanity ; 
third, being human, servants- have rights which no - 
amount of service money can buy ; and fourth, tran- 
scendent intellectual endowments, a physical devel- 
opment of fifty-horse power, the broad circle of the 
Christian graces and virtues, a faultless disposition, 
a knowledge of French cookery, and elegant hab- 
its, cannot be obtained for nine Yankee shillings a 
a w r eek. A mistress admitting generally the truth 
of these propositions possesses a basis of secur- 
ing service that shall be reasonably satisfactory to 
her. 

There is quite too much of the feeling among 
mistresses that they have a right to use a servant as 
a fast boy uses a hired horse. They are to get the 



SERVANTS. 203 

most out of them that they can for the money they 
pay. They take no personal interest in them. — ex- 
tend to them no matronly care and kindness. 
They forget that a servant is a social being. They 
forget that she has humble loves and hopes, has 
desires for freedom and recreation, as important to 
her as the higher love and hopes and desires of the 
more favored girls who occupy the parlor. They 
forget that the labors of the kitchen are tedious ; 
that the confinement of the kitchen is irksome. 
They become exacting, — strict in rules, rigid in 
discipline, and peremptory in their commands. It- 
is not in human nature to stand this kind of thing, 
so the servant gets hardened at last, or wilfully 
careless. She receives no praise, any way, and 
therefore tries to get none. A servant, generally 
speaking, whose feelings as a humble woman are 
appreciated by her mistress, who is praised for 
what she does that is well, and kindly and patiently 
instructed to correct that which is not wen, who is 
treated to sympathetic and considerate words, and 
indulged in that liberty which is absolutely essen- 
tial to her bodily and mental health, will love her 
mistress, and have a desire to please. This, in all 
good and tolerably sensible natures, will settle the 
matter. A girl exercised by this love and this de- 
sire will be a good servant ninety-nine times in a 
hundred. It is under relations like these that at- 
tachments are formed which are as tender as hu- 
manity and as lasting as life. 
There is a broad view in which this and all kind- 



204 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

red matters are to be regarded. The mistress is 
quite as dependent upon the servant as the servant 
upon the mistress. She renders an equivalent for 
what you give her, and her service is as essential 
to you as your money is to her. You cannot get 
along without her, nor can she get along without 
you. Your position, to be sure, is superior to hers, 
but she owes you nothing, save faithful service and 
respect. The obligations are not all upon one side. 
It is just as much your duty to be a kind mistress 
and friend to her, as it is her duty to give faithful 
service and respectful treatment to you. If, there- 
fore, you fail in your duty, you must not blame 
her for failiDg in hers. I have never yet seen a 
good servant who had not either a good mistress, or 
one who was actually inferior to herself. Human 
nature is very prevalent among women, and espe- 
cially among maids of all- work. 



LETTER VI. 
TJie Institution of Home. 

Home of our childhood ! How affection clings 
And novers round thee with seraph wings ! 

O. W. Holmes. 

For there are two heavens, sweet, 
Both made of love — one inconceivable 
Even by the other, so divine it is; 
The other far on this side of the stars 
By men called Home, when some blest pair have met, 
As we are now. 

Leigh Hunt. 

THE French have no word into which the En- 
glish word home may be legitimately trans- 
lated; yet it is sufficiently evident that many of 
the French people have the thing without the 
name, while a large portion of the American peo- 
ple have the name without the thing. There are 
comparatively few who have an adequate idea of 
what home is, as an institution. It is recognized 
as a house, containing a convenient number of 
chairs and tables, with a sufficiency of chamber 
furniture and eatables, a place to eat and sleep in, 



206 TITCOJU'S LETTERS. 

simply. It is not unjust to say that half of the 
young married people of America have no higher 
conception of home than this. What they call 
their homes are simply boarding-houses, where, for 
purposes of economy and convenience, they board 
themselves. 

In my idea, home rises to the dignity of an in- 
stitution of life, and, like everything legitimately to 
be called an institution of life, is both an out- 
growth of life, and a contributor to its develop- 
ment. Like all institutions, it has its external 
form and internal power and significance. Like 
the church, it has its edifice and appointments 
not only, but its membership, its bonds of spirit- 
ual fellowship, and its germinal ideas, developing 
themselves into influences that bear flowers and 
fruits to charm and feed the soul. It is into the 
meaning of the word Home that I would introduce 
you first, my friends, and then into the home it- 
self. Marriage is the legitimate basis of a genuine 
home. A husband is its priest and a wife its 
priestess; and it is for you, young husband and 
young wife, to establish this institution, maintain 
it, beautify it in its outward form, fill it with all 
good influences, develop its capacities, make it the 
expression of your best ideas of intimate social 
life, and to use it as an instrument of genial power 
in moulding such outside life as may come into 
contact with it. Its outward form and its internal 
arrangements should, so far as your means will 
permit, be the outgrowth of your finest ideas and 



TEE INSTITUTION OF HOME. 207 

the expression of your best tastes, combined with 
the practical ingenuities which may be rendered 
necessary by a wholesome economy. 

It is not the elm before the door of home that 
the sailor pines for when tossing on the distant sea. 
It is not the house that sheltered his childhood, 
the well that gave him drink, nor the humble bed 
where he used to lie and dream. These may be 
the objects that come to his vision as he paces the 
lonely deck, but the heart within him longs for 
the sweet influences that came through all these 
things, or associated with them ; for the heart 
clings to the institution which developed it — to 
that beautiful tree of which it is the fruit. Wher- 
ever, therefore, the heart wanders, it carries the 
thought of home with it. Wherever, by the rivers 
of Babylon, the heart feels its loss and loneliness, 
it hangs its harp upon the willows and weeps. It 
prefers home to its chief joy. It will never forget 
it. For there swelled its first throb. There were 
developed its first affections. There a mother's 
eyes looked into it; there a mother's voice spoke to 
it ; there a mother's prayer blessed it. There the 
love of parents and brothers and sisters gave it 
precious entertainment. There bubbled up from 
unseen fountains life's first effervescing hopes. 
There life took form, and color, and consistence. 
From that centre went out all its young ambitions. 
Towards that focus return its concentring mem- 
ories. There it took form, and fitted itself to lov- 
ing natures and pleasant natural scenes; and it will 



£08 TITCOMF8 LETTERS. 

carry that impress wherever it may go, unless it 
become perverted by sin or make to itself an- 
other home, sanctified by a new and more precious 
affection. 

It is in the little communities which we call 
American homes that the hope of America rests. 
It is here that subordination to wholesome restraint 
and respect for law are inculcated. It is here, if 
anywhere, that the affections receive their culture, 
that amiable dispositions are developed, that the 
a-mcnities of life are learned, that the mmd and the 
body are established in healthful habits, that mu- 
tual respect for mutual rights is engendered, and 
here that all those faculties and qualities are nur- 
tured which enter into the structure of worthy 
character. In the homes of America are born the 
children of America, and from them go out into 
American life American men and women. They 
go out with the stamp of these homes upon them, 
and only as these homes are what they should be, 
will they be what they should be. It is with 
this in view that I offer a few suggestions touch- 
ing the establishment of this institution by you. 

Just as soon as it is possible for you to do so, 
buy a house, the ground it stands on, and as much 
land around it as your business, convenience, or 
taste may require. ^ A home can never be all that it 
should be to you and yours, unless you own it. 
This is doubtless impossible to a great multitude 
who will read this letter, but let not' such be dis- 
co Liraged. A beautiful home life may be developed, . 



THE INSTITUTION OF HOME. 209 

even by a tenant at will; though the security and 
fixedness of proprietorship are greatly tributary to 
home's permanent influences. If the home is 
owned, see that its exterior represents you faith- 
fully. What you cannot afford in architecture, you 
canwfc supply in vines and flowers. The interior 
should receive the impress of all the order, neat- 
ness, taste, and ingenuity that are in you. Your 
home is the temple of your sweetest human love. 
It is in this temple that youug immortals are born. 
It is here that characters are shaped into manhood 
and womanhood— the highest earthly estate. It 
is here that you are to work out the problem of 
your lives. It is a place of dignity. Therefore 
give it honor ; make it beautiful ; make it wor- 
thy! 

All this, however, only relates to the location — 
the shell of your home. The ordering of its in- 
ternal life is of still greater importance. The 
greatest danger of home life springs from its fa- 
miliarity. Kindred hearts, gathered at a common 
fireside, are far too apt to relax from the proprieties 
of social life. Careless language and careless attire 
are too apt to be indulged in when the eye of the 
world is shut off, and the ear of the world cannot 
hear. I counsel no stiffness of family etiquette — 
no sternness of family discipline — like that which 
prevailed in the olden time. The day is past for 
that, but the day for thorough respectfulness 
among the members of a home — the day for care- 
ful propriety of dress and address — will never pass. 



210 TITCOMFS LETTERS. 

For it is Iiere that the truest and most faultless so- 
cial life is to be lived: it is here that such a life is 
to be learned. A home in which politeness 
reigns is a home from which polite men and 
women go out ; and they go out directly from no 
other. 

The ordering of a home life is so intimately con- 
nected with the treatment of children, that this 
subject should be treated definitely. First, every 
child born to you should learn among the first 
things it is capable of learning, that in your home 
your will is supreme. The earlier a child learns 
this, the better; and he should learn at the same 
time, from all your words and all your conduct, 
that such authority is the companion of the ten- 
derest love and the most genial kindness. Play with 
your children as much as you please ; make your- 
selves their companions and sympathizers and con- 
fidants; but keep all the time the reins of your 
authority steadily drawn, and never allow yourselves 
to be trifled with. It is only in this way that 
you can keep the management of your home in 
your own hands, and retain the affectionate re- 
spect of those you love as you do yourselves. 

Again, make your home a happy place — a pleas- 
ant place. Much can be done towards this end by 
beautifying it in the manner I have already pointed 
out. Much more can be done by providing food 
and amusement for the minds of your children. 
These minds you will find to be active, restless, 



THE INSTITUTION OF HOME. 211 

and greedy for new impressions. This restlessness 
is a heaven-implanted impulse. You have neither 
the power nor the right to repress it; but it is 
your duty to give it direction, so far as possible, 
and to guide it to legitimate ends. You will find 
one of three things to be true of your children. 
They will be happy at home, or discontented at 
home, or they will seek for happiness away from 
home. In the ignorance of the nature of child- 
hood on the part of parents has originated the 
ruin of millions of men and women. Bursting 
from an unnatural and irrational restraint, they 
have rushed from the release of parental authority 
to perdition; or, allowed to seek for happiness 
away from home and away from restraint, they 
have contracted habits which curse them and their 
parents while they live. So I tell you that the 
only way for you to save your children is to make a 
home so pleasant to them — to provide such grate- 
ful changes for their uneasy natures — as shall make 
their home the most delightful spot on earth, a 
spot to be loved while they live in it, and a spot to 
be recalled with grateful memories when they 
leave it. Profoundly to be commiserated is that 
child who looks back upon his home as upon a 
prison-house; upon his youth as a season of hard- 
ship; upon his parents as tyrants. If such a child 
ever become a good and genial man or woman, it 
will be in spite of a bad jLome. 
I am well aware that the homes of Ameiica will 



212 TITCOMFS LETTERS. 

not become what they should be until a true idea 
of life shall become more widely implanted. The 
worship of the dollar does more to degrade Ameri- 
can homes and the life of those homes than any- 
thing — than all things — else. Utility is the God 
of almost universal worship. The chief end of life 
is to gather gold, and that gold is counted lost 
which hangs a picture upon the wall, which pur- 
chases flowers for the yard, which buys a toy or a 
book for the eager hand of. childhood. ~Ts this 
tne whole of human life? Then it is a mean, mea- 
gre, and a most undesirable thing! A child will go 
forth from such a home as a horse will go from a 
stall — glad to find free air and a wider pasture. 
The influence of such a home upon him in after 
life will be just none at all, or nothing good. 
Thousands are rushing from homes like these every 
year. They crowd into cities. They crowd into 
villages. They swarm into all places where life is 
clothed with a higher significance ; and the old 
shell of home is deserted by every bird as soon as 
it can fly. Ancestral homesteads and patrimonial 
acres have no sacredness; and when the father and 
the mother die, the stranger's money and the 
stranger's presence obliterate associations that 
should be among the most sacred of all things. 

I would have you build up for yourselves and for 
your children a home which will never be lightly 
parted with — a home which shall be to all whose 
lives have been associated with it the most inter- 
esting and precious spot upon earth. I would have _ 



TEE INSTITUTION OF EOAIR 213 

that home the abode of dignity, propriety 
• ship andhapp; 

sacli a home I would have good i 
•• into neighborhoods and comnumi 
In such a home I • 

.ring all g 
therein yon, young h and young 

happy- ~Do not depri -elves of such 

3 as will come to you through an ins 
tion like this. Xo money can pay you for such a 
deprivation. Xo circumstances but those of attei 
poverty can justify you in denying these influences 
to your children. 

It is to the institution of home, as develop e 
mi and power, under the letter 
Lsfdanity, that I point when the sc_. 
approaches me with his sophisms, the New L 
with their loose theories of marriage, and the infi- 
del with his howl over the basis :: i civil- 
ization. It is the history of this home, since 
jt lived, that is one of the strongest testimo- 
nials to his divine authority. In whatever land, un- 
der what* :em, by w men and wo- 
men, the d home h le for 
ifol inventions., society has degenerated to- 
wards or into beastliness. As I have rfore, 
the hope of America is the homes of America. If 
you to whom I write will each for himself and her- 
self m the noble institutions Hea- 
ven designs they shall be, this generation shall not 
pass away before the world shall look upon a peo- 



214 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

pie the like and the equal of which it has never 
seen. A generation shall take possession of the 
land full of dignity, love, grace, and goodness, 
glowing with a patriotism as true as their regard 
for home is sacred, and showing that the strength 
of the nation is forged under the smoke that rises 
from its happy household fires. 



LETTER VIZ 
Social Homes, and Blessings for Daily Use. 

How sweet, hovr passing street, is Solitude 1 
But grant me still a friend in my r -: 
Whoni I may whisper, Soli - --.-t ! 

Cowpeil 

The : rued, 

Stalked off reluctant, like an ill-used ghost, 
Not to return. 

Eobeut Blatb. 

I HATE talked to you of your duties to each 
other, to your relatives, and to your servants. 
It remains to me to speak of your duties to society, 
as heads of families and rulers of homes. 

I have insisted on the thorough identification of 
husband and wife in feeling, pride of character 
and family pursuit, and interest; yet I am aware 
that this identification may be perverted into a 
most senseless and selfish devotion to one another, 
and an exclusivenecs of communication, which are 
destructive of social life. I am acquainted with 



216 TITCOZfB'S LETTERS. 

too many husbands and wives who, though all the 
world to each other, are nothing to the world. 
Their whole life is within their home. They gath- 
er comforts about them, they bear dainties to each 
other's lips; they live and move and have their 
. whole being in each other's love ; and, shut- 
ting out all the world, live only for themselves. I 
say I know too many such pairs as these. They 
are far too plenty. They cannot bear to be torn 
from their homes for an afternoon. They take no 
interest in others. They never call friends and 
neighbors around their board, and they consider it 
a hardship to fulfil the common offices of social po- 
liteness — to say nothing of hospitality. It is not 
unjust to say that this is one of the most dangerous 
and most repulsive forms of married life. It is 
selfishness doubled, associated, instituted; and it 
deserves serious treatment. 

Homes, like individuals, have their relations to 
each other; and, as no man liveth to himself alone, 
no home should live to itself alone. It is through 
the medium of homes that the social life-blood of 
America is kept in circulation — through this medi- 
um almost exclusively. Every home should be as 
a city set upon a hill, that cannot be hid. Into it 
should flock friends and friendships, bringing the 
life of the world, the stimulus and the modifying 
power of contact with various natures, the fresh 
flowers of feeling gathered from wide fields. Out 
of it should flow benign charities, pleasant ameni- 
ties, and all those influences which are the natural 



SOCIAL HOMES. 217 

offspring of a high and harmonious home life. In- 
tercommunication of minds and homes is the con- 
dition of individual and social development, and 
failing of this no married pair can be what they 
should be to each other. Exclusive devotion to busi- 
ness by day, and exclusive devotion to selfish home 
enjoyments at night, will diy up, harden, and de- 
preciate the richest natures in the course of a few 
years; and, so soon as the man withdraws from the 
business of the world, the world has seen the last 
of him and his family for life. They have no out- 
side associations. It is as if they did not live at alL 
When they die, nobody misses them, for they have 
been nothing to society. As many doors are open 
as before, and social life feels no ripple upon 
its surface when the sand is thrown upon their cof- 
fins. 

There should glow in every house, throughout 
the land, the light of a pleasant welcome for 
friends. On every hearth should leap the flame 
that irradiates the forms and faces of associates. 
Neighborhood should mean something more than 
a collection of dark and selfishly-closed hearts and 
houses. A community should be something better 
than an aggregation of individuals and homes gov- 
erned by the same laws, and sustaining equal civil 
burdens. Neighborhood should be the name of a 
vital relationship. A community should be a com- 
munity in fact — informed with a genial, social 
life, in which the influence of each nature, the 
power of each intellect, the wealth of each indi- 



218 TITCOMBS LETTERS. 

victual acquisition, the force of every well-directed 
will, and the inspiration of every high and pure 
character, should be felt by all. A neighborhood 
of homes like this, would be a neighborhood in- 
deed; and none other deserves the name. 

The fact is, that selfishness is the bane of all life. 
It cannot enter into lif e — individual, family, or so- 
cial — without cursing it. Therefore, if any mar- 
ried pair find themselves inclined to confine them- 
selves to one another's society, indisposed to go 
abroad and mingle with the life around them, dis- 
turbed and irritated by the collection of friends in 
their own dwelling, or in any way moved to regard 
their social duties as disagreeable, let them be 
alarmed at once. It is a bad symptom — an essen- 
tially morbid symptom. They should institute 
means at once for removing this feeling; and they 
can only remove it by persistently going into socie- 
ty, persistently gathering it into their own dwell- 
ing, and persistently endeavoring to learn to love, 
and feel an interest in, all with whom they meet. 
The process of regeneration will not be a tedious 
one, for the rewards of social life are immediate. 
The heart enlarges quickly with the practice of 
hospitality. The sympathies run and take root, 
from point to point, each root throwing up leaves 
and bearing flowers and fruit like strawberry vines, 
if they are only allowed to do so. It is only sym- 
pathies and strawberries that are cultivated in hills, 
which do otherwise. The human face is a thing 
which shou'd be able to bring the heart into bios- 



SOCIAL HOMES. 219 

soei with a moment's shining, and it will be snch 
with you, if you will meet it properly. 

The penalties of family isolation will not, unh!^ 
pily, fall entirely upon yourselves. They will be vis- 
ited with double force upon your children. Child- 
ren, reared in a home with few or no associations, 
will grow up either boorish or sensitively timid. It 
is a cruel wrong to children to rear them without 
bringing them into continued contact with polite 
social life. The ordeal through which children thus 
reared are obliged to pass, in gaining the ease and 
assurance which will make them at home elsewhere 
than under the paternal roof, is one of the severest; 
while those who are constantly accustomed to a so- 
cial life from their youth, are educated in all its 
forms and graces without knowing it 

Great multitudes of men and women, all over the 
country, are now living secluded from social con- 
tact, simply from their sensitive consciousness of ig- 
norance of the forms of graceful intercourse. They 
feel that they cannot break through their reserve. 
There is, doubtless, much that is morbid in this 
feeling, and yet it is mainly natural. From all this 
mortification and this deprivation, every soul might 
have been saved by education in a home where so- 
cial life was properly lived. It is cruel to deny to 
children the opportunity, not only to become ac- 
customed from their first consciousness to the 
forms of society, but to enjoy its influence upon 
their developing life. Society is food to children. 
Contact with other minds is the means by which 



220 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

they are educated; and the difference in families of 
children will show at once to the accustomed eye, 
the different social character of their parents. But 
I have no space to follow this subject further; and 
I leave it with you, with the earnest wish that you 
will consider it, and profit by the suggestions I 
have given you. 

I must talk to you in this letter (for I have but 
one more to write) in regard to your way of living, 
and your main objects of life. Are you stretching 
every nerve and straining every muscle to get gold? 
Have you associated respectability with wealth? 
Are you denying to yourself a free and generous lif e 
now in your youth, in order to enjoy such a life 
when youth shall have passed away? Are you 
scrimping yourselves and your families by mean 
economies which grudge every sixpence that es- 
capes you, and make of your life a hard and home- 
ly thing? I know of many young married people 
who are living a life like this, and I pity them 
more than I blame them, because they are victims 
of false ideas, very probably inculcated by thrifty 
parents or by most thriftless philosophers. If you 
are an unsocial pair, the probabilities are that you 
are engaged in precisely this business. 

Now I wish to tell you of something very much 
better than this. I am not going to advise you to 
adopt a luxurious style of living. I am not going 
to tell you to spend all you get, and to run in debt 
for that which you are unable to pay for. But I 
say that for every capable and healthy man, and 



SOCIAL HOMES. 221 

every clever and sensible woman, both of whom are 
industrious, there is enough to be won in the work 
of life to afford a generous living, and leave a suf- 
ficient margin for independent competence. The 
years of your life will be few, at the most : and for 
you to throw away the enjoyment of their passing 
days for a good which may never come, to be en- 
joyed in a life that is uncertain, is to throw away 
for ever the blessings which God intends for your 
present food. God's blessings are not cumulative. 
The manna that fell in the wilderness came every 
day, and spoiled with the keeping. You may lay 
up wealth for age, but age, with its teeth gone, its 
sensibilities killed, and without employment, can 
not enjoy it. So, I tell you to enjoy your wealth 
while you are earning it. I do not mean by 
this that you are to lay up nothing. I do not 
mean that you ' shall be imprudent or impro- 
vident. I only counsel that use of your money, 
from day to day, which will give you generous 
food, tasteful dress, and pleasant surroundings, and 
which will tend to make Life comfortable and beau- 
tiful. 

But some will read this who are in poverty, who 
do not hope to obtain even independence. I am 
not writing to you, my friends, but to your neigh- 
bors, less happy than you, who have taken it into 
their heads to get rich. Perhaps they may be 
your employers. At any rate, they are very unenvi- 
able people. I write to those who have the p< 
to make money, and who ignore the present bless- 



222 rtrrooMEs letters. 

ings of their lot — who enjoy no present blessings. 
I write to those who wait for wealth to make their 
first contributions to public charities, to aid in the 
support of social and religious institutions, to min- 
gle in that neighborhood life which involves a gen- 
ial hospitality to fill their library with books and 
their halls with pictures, to resort to the concert 
and exhibition rooms for refining amusement, to 
give employment to the poor, to make their homes 
the embodiment of good taste and substantial com- 
fort, and to provide for health and pleasant recrea- 
tion. 

I believe that twice as much may be enjoyed in 
this life, as is now enjoyed, if people would only 
take and use the blessings which Heaven confers 
on them for present use, "We strive to accumulate 
beyond our wants, and beyond the wants of our 
families. In doing this we deny to ourselves 
leisure, recreation, culture, and social relaxation. 
When wealth has been won, our power to enjoy it 
is past, and it goes into the hands of children 
whose industry and enterprise it kills and whose 
best fife it spoils. It is not often that great ac- 
cumulations of wealth do anybody good. They 
usually spoil the happiness of two generations- 
one in the getting, and one in the spending. 

I love the man who earns his money with the 
special design of spending it — the man who re- 
gards money only as a means of procuring that 
which shall supply the passing wants of his nature 
— of his whole-nature — and for securing education 



SOCIAL HOMES. 223 

to his children, and comfort to his old age. It is to 
such that men go for subscriptions to -worthy ob- 
jects. It is by the fireside and at the board of such 
that I am happy. It is with the free and generous 
souls of such that I delight to come in contact. It 
is for such souls that life is made. Such men as 
these go on from year to year, building up their 
homes, making them abodes of beauty and plenty, 
and places of refreshment for five hundred cordial 
hearts. Wherever they go, hands of warm good 
fellows are held out to them. They have the 
blessing of the helpless, and the envy of no man. 
Sometimes, perhaps, their wives are envied by the 
wives of other men, but it is probably out of the 
power of either party to help that. 



LETTER VIH 

A Vision of Life, and its Meaning. 

Here manhood struggles for the sake 

Of mother, sister, daughter, wife, 

■— The graces and the loves which make 

The music of the march of life; 

And woman, in her daily round 

Of duty, walks on holy ground ! 

Whittieb. 

And so, 'twixt joy, 
And love, and tears, and whatsoever pain 
Man fitly shares with man, these two grow old; 
And, if indeed blest thoroughly, they die 
In the same spot, and nigh the same good hour; 
And setting suns look heavenly on their grave I 

Leigh Hunt. 

THIS is my twenty- fourth and last letter to the 
young. As a preliminary to its composition, 
I have re-read every previous letter, and the sub- 
ject of this has been suggested by the perusal, i 
have asked myself " what kind of men and women 
will these letters make, if there happen to be any 
who adopt their counsels ?" The reply comes to 
me in the form oi a vision which I will unfold to 
you. 



A VISION OF LIFE. 225 

I see a young man standing at the opening gates of 
life, and with earnest eyes scanning the landscape 
that stretches before him. Flowers are springing 
at his feet among the velvet grass; brooks are drag- 
ging their chains of flashing silver over the rocks, 
and passing in careless frolic towards the sea; 
birds are fluttering like wind-tossed blossoms amid 
the . overhanging foliage, and breathing their fra- 
grant melody upon the air; breezes full of love are 
fanning his cheek, and filling him with a sense of 
intoxicating pleasure, and the sky is bending over 
hi™ with no break of blue save where, in the exalted 
perspective, golden clouds sit like crowns upon gol- 
den mountains. His heart is bold, his limbs are 
strong, his blood is healthful, and his whole sus- 
ceptible and sensuous nature throbs with responses 
to the appeals of the beauty and music and sweet- 
ness around and before him. 

He takes a step, and Pleasure comes from her 
secret bower, and invites him to her banquet of de- 
lights. He pauses for a moment, shivers with the 
stress of the temptation, puts her resolutely aside, 
and passes on. Idleness, lolling beneath a shade, 
points to a vacant seat, and closes her languid 
eyes; but with disgust he leaves her and presses 
forward. Ambition beckons from some sudden 
summit, but he heeds her not. Then Duty comes, 
and standing before him — a firm and earnest figure 
— points to a burden and bids him take it up, and 
bear it as he journeys onward. He pauses, looks 
around, ahead, above, then lifts it to his shoulder, 



226 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

and "with muscles firmly strained presses forward 
with new vigor. Soon he becomes accustomed to 
the load, and then Duty comes again, and bids him 
add to it. He willingly takes on the new burden, 
and as he does so, finds his heart warming with 
cheerfulness, and his voice bursting into song. 
Revellers, steeped with wine and wild with hilari- 
ty, look up from their vine-covered table at the 
sound of the healthy lay, and laugh and scoff, but 
they do not reproach him. Temptations that 
throng the path of the weak and faithless slink 
away from him without attack; or, if one scatter its 
charms upon him, they slide off like dew from 
bronze. 

So Duty becomes to him a guiding angel. Wher- 
ever she' leads he follows. In her steps he drops 
into deep ravines, hidden from the light of the 
sun; he plunges into streams whose billows affright 
and chill him, and crosses them by a might which 
grows with every struggle; he scales mountains 
that lie in his path, piled with huge discourage- 
ments, and sees from the summit of achievement, 
shimmering in the distance, the streams of great 
reward, winding among meadows of heavenly re- 
compense. At last he comes to a point in his way 
where he pauses, and looks around him. In the 
pause he listens to the r beating of his own heart. 
It is the thrill and rhythm of manhood which that 
heart is strongly telling. He sees that he has made 
progress toward the golden mountains, with their 
crowns of golden clouds. The noise of the revel- 



A VISION OF LIFE. 227 

lers lias died upon his ear. Pleasure and Indo- 
lence are far back, and the temptations of youth are 
past, and he is, so far, safe. He sees how the bur- 
dens he has borne and the struggles he has put 
forth have knit his muscles, and strengthened his 
will, and developed his power. He sees how each 
constituent of the manhood that has now become 
his choicest possession was won by toil and fatigue, 
and self-denial and patience and resistance of 
temptation. He sees that it could have been won 
in no other way, and gives honest thanks to the 
Providence which has thus transmuted the evil 
of life into good. 

There we leave him standing, and change the 
scene. At another gate a maiden enters. The 
rose sits upon her cheek, and the lily upon her bos- 
om. Good angels are hovering all about her; and 
seeking some secret recess, she kneels and dedi- 
cates herself to Heaven. As she comes into the 
path the Tempter looks at her, and slinks away 
from her sweet and unsuspicious eyes, as if they 
were windows through which he had caught a 
glimpse of God. She is conscious from the first 
that life has meaning in it, and that the soul which 
informs her has a duty and a destiny. She knows 
that that soul is to be strengthened and enriched, — ■ 
that it is to be kept pure, and beautified with all \ 
precious graces. Fashion and Frivolity flaunt' 
then- gewgaws before her eyes, but she puts them 
aside. They seek to divert her into vain pursuits, 
but she has a steady purpose and keeps a steady 



228 TITCOMES LETTERS. 

path. Flocks of seductive thoughts hover about 
her head, and tease her bewildered eyes; but she 
repels them until they leave her. She gathers the 
flowers of life that bloom by the way, and places 
them in her hair. Kind words and smiles go out 
from her, and come back winged blessings to nes- 
tle on her breast. Little deeds of charity and 
mercy, dropped by the way, change into pearls, 
and seek her hand again. The mother leans upon 
her shoulder, and the sister clings to her arm. Up 
weary slopes she toils to gather fruits from the tree 
of knowledge. Down into valleys of suffering she 
walks, bearing balsams for the sick. She thinks of 
ease but to scorn it, and finds in the exercise 1 of 
her faculties and the play of her sympathies and 
the development of her powers such healthful joy 
as only the worthy know. And thus she passes on ( 
— a creature of beauty, a bearer of purity, a being 
of modest graces and noble aptitudes, of fine in- 
stincts and self-denying heroism, until her nature 
brims — a golden goblet — with the wine of woman- 
hood, and she meets the companion for whom 
God designed her— whom God designed for her. 

Thus our third scene is prepared for us. Man- 
hood and womanhood meet, and lives that were 
separate melodies become a harmony. How it may 
seem to others I know not, but true love between 
man and woman — the love that gives its all for 
life, for the simple rewards of congenial compan- 
ionship, seems to me the most lovely outgrowth of 
human nature. God and all good things breathe 



A VISIOX OF LIFR 229 

'b^nisons upon it. It is the advent of a heart into 
another heart, — the entrance of one spiritual nature 
into the spiritual nature of another, giving, I doubt 
not, a foretaste of the exquisite bliss which thrills 
the soul as it passes into the gate of Paradise. 
And there stand our young man and young wo- 
man* her head upon his shoulder, and her ear 
drinking in the tender confessions of an affection • 
to which her happy heart responds in gentlest 
numbers. "What God hath joined together let 
no man put asunder," falls from the sky where the 
evening star is glowing. They look up, and 
a pledge, heard in heaven and on earth, falls 
from their lips. Friends flock around them, and 
kisses falls upon the young wife's cheek amid the 
baptism of tears. Golden fruits are borne to then* 
lips, and the twilight air is full of the pleasant 
jargon of happy human voices. Oh ! brightly 
gleam the golden mountains in the last rays 
of the sunken sun ; and the golden clouds that 
crown them blaze with more than a solar glory. 

And now begins the united life. Hand in hand 
and . heart to heart they resume their passage up 
the long incline. In the early morning, I see 
them kneeling side by side, worshipping the God 
of their life, confessing their weakness and their 
sin, and praying for that spiritual nourishment 
which shall build them up into a saintly estate. 
At evening, before they lie down by the wayside 
for repose, I see them knee] again, and com mime 
with the Good Father whose spirit dwells within 



230 TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

them. If one takes up a cross, it is lightened by 
the other's hand. If one gathers a joy from the 
boughs of Heaven's munificence, the other is 
called to share it. With no heart- wanderings, no 
untruth, no repinings, no selfish monopoly of de- 
light, they pass on for months till now I see that 
the wife has become a mother, and bears a little 
babe upon her bosom. It is a gift of God, pre- 
cious beyond all price; and when they kneel again 
they thank God for it, — for all the joy it brings 
them, for all the care it imposed upon them, for all 
the hallowed sympathies it calls into play, for the 
new springs of pleasure and life which it uncovers 
to them. Soon the little one is on its feet, and 
dances along the way, while another takes its place 
in the maternal arms. And as the years pass 
away, another and another are added to the pilgrim 
group, till they look like a band of attendant cher- 
ubim. 

Meanwhile, I see that the limbs of the pair are 
growing weary. The way is hard and rough, and 
both are laden with a burden of care, accumulat- 
ing as they go; and now they pass into a cloud. 
Dimly through the vapor gathering before my own 
eyes, or enveloping them, I see them bowing by 
the way. One of the little ones — its fingers full of 
life's roses — lies stretched upon the sand. They 
kiss his marble cheek, and the little group bend 
over him and weep trickling tears, like statues at a 
fountain. I hear the mother say — " Oh, but for 
these, would I had died for thee, my son !" Trom 



A VISION OF LIFE. 231 

the far height I hear the tone of a bell. — is it on 
earth or in heaven? Is it a sad bell or a glad bell? 
I know not; but I see that after they had hollowed 
a little grave, and deposited their treasure, and 
knelt upon it and said, " Thy will, not mine," the 
cloud is drunk up by the unseen spirits of the air, 
and away, on the pinnacle of the golden mountains, 
stands a little form with its fingers full of roses, 
beckoning! There is a stir in the golden clouds 
above him, and he is received up out of their 
sight. 

Years come and go till the little ones have be- 
come men and women. The father's beard and 
the father's hair, so black and heavy at first, have 
become thin and white. He leans upon his staff, 
and totters manfully on. Son and daughter press 
around the mother and sustain her feeble form. 
An atmosphere of love envelops them all. And so 
they rise higher and still higher, until, in other 
than earthly light, they stand glorified upon one of 
the golden summits. They stand upon the mount 
of vision, earth below and heaven above them. 
They gaze down upon the long and weary path 
they have trodden, and see that their life has been 
one long process of education and purification. 
That which was but a path of thorns in the passage 
is changed to a pavement of gold in the retrospect. 
Flying over the sh hing track, they see the Angel 
of God's Providence; and now they know, what 
once they could not wholly see, that the darkness 
which had so often passed over them as they jour- 



232 TITGOMES LETTERS. 

neyed was but the shadow of His blessed wings. 
But there comes a sound of chariots and horses ; 
the children press up to bid them adieu, the moun- 
tains grow radiant with a descending light; a little 
voice, never forgotten, breaks through the purpling, 
silence like an arrow of silver; and at the swee 
word "come," they are withdrawn into the open 
ing glory. 

That, my friends, is my vision. Is it all fancy t 
Is it all imagination? Is it all poetry? Have you 
an idea that fancy, or imagination, or poetry can 
do justice' to the grandeur, beauty, and essential 
glory of a true life? I have only felt in painting 
it, how utterly poor I am in the endeavor to ex- 
press my conception of the highest life of man and 
woman, by the use of language. That little creed 
of Mrs. Browning, uttered impulsively, in a flash 
of inspired conviction, has a world of meaning in 
it that the slow soul does not peraeive. "I do be- 
lieve in God and love," said the sweet songstress ; 
and so do I. With God and love in human life, it 
becomes essentially a noble and beautiful thing. 
To live a life thus informed is a peerless privilege 
— no matter at what cost of transient pain or un- 
remitting toil. It is a thing above professions and 
callings and creeds. It is a thing which brings to 
its nourishment all good, and appropriates to its 
development of power all evil. It is the greatest 
and best thing under the whole heaven. Place 
cannot enhance its honor ; wealth cannot add to 
its value* It is the highest thing. Its course lies 



A VISION OF LIFE. 233 

through true manhood and womanhood, through 
true fatherhood and motherhood, through true 
friendship and relationship, of all legitimate and 
natural sorts whatsoever. It lies through sorrow 
and pain and poverty, and aU earthly discipline. 
It lies through unswerving truth to God and man. 
It lies through patient, self-denying heroism. It 
lies through all heaven-prescribed and conscien- 
tious duty, and it leads as straight to heaven's 
brightest gate, as the track of a sunbeam to the 
bosom of a flower. 

As I look around me, and see how poor, how 
frivolous, how weak and drivelling a thing life is, 
as it is lived by the mass of those who are married, 
I confess that I am rilled with wonder and with 
pity. Marriage is too much a convention, — its 
habits and duties are too much conventional. 
That it is only to be made something better by a 
change in the general estimate and idea of life, I 
have said in previous letters. That a man and wo- 
man who live to eat, and dress, and make money ; 
whose ends of life are answered in the satisfaction 
of appetite and ambition, and a thirst for gold and 
equipage and position, should many for a higher 
motive than fancy and convenience, is not to be ex- 
pected. The structure, therefore, of a true mar- 
ried life must be laid upon the basis of a true in- 
dividual life. When men and women have con- 
ceived and accepted the idea that all good in earth 
and heaven is intended to minister directly aod in- 
directly to in dividual growth, and that that which 



234 . TITCOMB'S LETTERS. 

we call evil — toil, poverty, sorrow, pain, and temp- 
tation to sin — is intended for the development of 
power and the discipline of passion ; when they 
see that life tends upwards, and is only a prepara- 
tion for another sphere and a better, and that all that 
surrounds them is perishable — food and shelter and 
ministry by the way — then they can have a concep- 
tion of what true marriage is. The relation is illu- 
minated with its full significance only by this true 
idea of individual life. The masculine and femi- 
nine nature come together for mutual stimulus and 
mutual feeding. Ail that is good in each becomes 
the property of the other, and all that is bad in 
each is neutralized by the other. Like the acid 
and the alkali, when brought together, their united 
life becomes a beaded draught, and bland as the 
juice of nectarines, and fit to sparkle on the lips of 
ar angel. 

And now, my friends, farewell ! Life is before 
you, — not earthly life alone, but life — a thread run- 
ning interminably through the warp of eternity ; 
and while I wish you all manly and womanly joy, 
and all healthful delight, I do not wish that no 
pain come on you, no care oppress you, no toil 
weary you, no sorrow swim in your eyes, no temp- 
tations beset you; but I wish that you may bear 
what God puts upon your shoulders, and bear it 
well. I wish that it may not be necessary to chas- 
ten you overmuch; but you can hardly grow strong 
without trouble, or sympathetic without sorrow. 
It was necessary that the only true human life ever 



A VISION OF L 235 

lived should be made " perfect through sniFeri 

and it is strange presumption for you to think that 

san be made perfect without it I wish you 

..rth — aa many as will min- 

jm growth and happiness — for life is a 

- as well as a great and wonderful thing. I 

you a family of precious children to fill your 

:•. and enrich your hearts with 

love. An m the evening of life, the golden 

clouds rest sweetly and invitingly upon the golden 

mountains, and the light of heaven streams down 

through the gathering mists of death, I wish you a 

nd abundant entrance into that world oi 

sb, where the great riddle of life, whose 

meaning I can only hint at, will be unfolded to 

you in the quick consciousness of a soul redeemed 

and purified. 



TEE EXD. 



